Basic Life Support
by Greysouthpaw
Summary: Jeff and the gang are doing a first aid course for extra credit over the summer, when the Dean arrives with an idea to save the life of Greendale Community College. With an opportunity to help revive their school and earn a few credits in the process, why wouldn't the group sign up to the new course? A bit of humor, a bit of romance, something to hold us all over until next season.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N-** My first Community Fic, set at the end of season 3. I welcome any feedback and I hope you enjoy.

Cautionary: I claim no ownership towards Community or any of the characters, they do not belong to me only the idea for this story does..

* * *

In the flickering light one of the rundown sheds on the edge of the Greendale campus, the seven friends looked apprehensively at each other before turning back to look at the vehicles parked inside.

There were three ramshackle vehicles parked within, looking somewhat a cross between a van and a small truck. They were filthy from years of neglect, spider webs hung heavily from the wing mirrors and the dust was piled thick on the bonnets. The grass green overalls they wore finally seemed appropriate in honour of the hard work that was obviously going to be needed to clean up the three trucks.

Unperturbed by the dilapidated state of their ride and oblivious of whatever nature had invaded the shed, Troy and Abed rushed forward to claim one as their own. The others watched on in mild disbelief at the pair's enthusiasm; it took both of them pulling together to finally wrench open the driver's door.

"This is so awesome!" Troy exclaimed, vocalising the exact opposite of what most of the group was feeling.

Typical too cool, ex-lawyer Jeff Winger rolled his eyes at his young friend's misplaced enthusiasm. The sleeves were rolled up to his bicep on his jumpsuit and he wore the front unzipped in a nonchalant fashion. The flash of white that was his singlet, cut through the gap in the hardy green garment. The letters G.A.S. were embroided on the chest of the uniform.

In the cab of their vehicle, Abed at least shared his best friend's eagerness. His intelligent eyes surveyed the small panel of dials, buttons and switches that was positioned between the driver and passengers dashboard space.

"Our very own Rig." He announced in an awed whisper at the wonderful gift they had acquired. References to famous movie or tv moments seemed to fly from his brain in the enormity of their discovery.

"Do you think the lights and siren still work?" His passenger asked hopefully, reaching for a lone dial and twisting.

Outside the vehicle, their five remaining friends startled at the sudden, horrible noise that issued from the scruffy vehicle. It was a terrible, slow, screeching yowl that seemed to trigger some underling impulse in the human to want to run and hide from the sound. Annie and Shirley immediately clapped their hands over their ears, in an attempt to block out the noise. Both Jeff and Britta seemed to fighting the urge to flee.

Pierce didn't seem quite as bothered by the noise, probably because he was a good deal deafer.

Britta thought it sounded a lot like the sound her cat had made when it got stuck in the bathtub at home. _Poor dear, he only has three legs, _she reflected in pity, associating the noise with a wounded animals sad attempt to escape.

Troy and Abed on the other hand were delighted by the sound. To them it was a melody of excitement and wonder.

"Cool. Cool, cool, cool." Abed stated in his happy monotone, placing his stamp of approval on the whole idea with his special handshake with Troy.

Yelling so he could be heard over the racket, Jeff leaned forward to ask Annie a question. Her pretty face was still cradled in her hands, but she dared to incline her head towards him and lifted one hand off her ear for a moment to see what he had to say.

Tearing his eyes from the smooth porcelain skin of her neck, Jeff found his gaze lured to the dusty, flashing, red light-bar on the roof of the boy's ambulance.

"How did we get suckered into doing this again?"

* * *

**Six weeks earlier.**

"Very good Ms Eddison, some nice bandaging there." The first aid instructor complemented the brunette dryly and she started to unravel the crepe bandage off Jeff's arm.

It had been perfectly applied and very neatly tied down; Annie crooked a little smile at the praise and satisfaction of another passing mark.

"Let's see you have a try Mr. Winger." The bored looking instructor suggested, his interest obviously not with the class. Proof of this was in the form of Abed, who was using all the spare bandages to turn Troy into a mummy.

Jeff sighed heavily and put down his phone; ready to put in the minimum effort to achieve a pass. Sitting in his chair at the study table, he looked up and spotted Britta and Shirley practicing on a cocky looking Pierce. Shirley was carefully arranging his arm into a sling while Britta was creating a bandage for his head that was looking more and more like just a white bandanna with every passing second.

"Help Jeff, I'm bleeding!" Annie prompted him, with a light swat to the arm.

Giving a token glance up at his assessor, Jeff casually reached a hand into the first aid kit they were given between a pair and pulled out a large pad of gauze and the roll of wide, white medical tape.

Shooting a lazy Winger grin at his attractive partner, he firmly pressed the open bandage on top of her thigh, just short of the hem of her skirt. Annie gave a little gasp as his unexpected pressure, but did not protest. With a careful squeeze still on her leg, Jeff pulled up the edge of the tape with his teeth and drew out an extended strip. He pressed the start of his tape down on the gauze and deftly ducked the roll under and around her bare leg several times, drawing the strip of fabric tight over the bandage. Finally he ripped the end of the tape with his teeth, leaning in close to his bandage to do so and patted down the tail of the sticky strip.

He sat back in his chair to find Annie starring at him with an unreadable expression.

She was in mixed feelings about his performance. Part of her was still shocked by the echo of his touch on her tender skin, the remanent of the feeling lingering in the firm constraint of his makeshift bandage. Another aspect of her was disappointed and angry at his lazy piece of patchwork, she had expected more from him. Wanted more from him.

Sure, a first aid course at Greendale was an easy way to pick up a couple of credits; she had still expected him to take things a little more seriously.

The instructor looked at his tape work and shrugged.

"Good, it works." He dismissed absently, scribbling on Jeff's assessment form and handing it back to him.

Jeff's carefree grin grew a half centimetre and he reached back for his phone.

Annie finally snapped, her anger winning through at receiving the same grade as him.

"Good? But Professor Garner, he didn't even bandage his dressing!" Annie cried in outrage, remembering her masterpiece of bandaging.

Troy and Abed ceased in their mummy making antics to watch the drama unfold.

The assessor was a worn out looking, middle aged guy with long grimy, dark hair, but he seemed to transform into something a lot more frightening, as he turned back to face the criticism of his marking.

His tone was brisk and irritated, as he if was insulted by her comment.

"Is the dressing tight Ms Eddison?" He asked her sharply, all trace of boredom gone.

Annie was taken back by the sudden question, but felt obliged to answer honestly with quick nod of her head. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jeff look up from his phone and take notice as his grade was discussed. Irritatingly enough, she noticed he still seemed confident and aloof in his position.

"Well pressure is what stops bleeding isn't it?" Professor Garner reminded her simply.

The simplicity of his answer held her speechless.

"It doesn't always have to be all tidy and pretty," He informed her, his eyes seemed to become distant and glazed as he finished.

"Medicine in the real world isn't tidy or pretty…"

And with that he left the young idealistic girl to think and went to check on the group that wasn't dressed like the Egyptian dead.

* * *

"Wow, where does the Dean find these guys?" Jeff commented cynically, with a shake of his head, his gelled up hair remained decidedly roguish despite the movement.

Annie turned back to face her partner, her anger dulled at his obvious mutual dismissal of the lecturers competence. Ultimately, she knew he didn't care because he had gotten his grade in the end, but she was reassured to think that he wasn't above saying things to make her feel better, in his own twisted fashion.

"Tape? Really Jeff?" She accused him, with a disappointed edge to her voice, as she leaned forward to take off his bandage. If she had really had been bleeding, would he have used tape?

"Have you seen this tape?" Jeff defended, brandishing what was left of the roll. "It is ridiculously strong, you could do so much stuff with some decent tape like this."

Peering over Annie's lowered shoulder he noticed that Troy and Abed were now stacking chairs and desks to make a pyramid. Heavy quantities of the same tape held it together at crucial junctions.

"Well maybe not that kind of stuff," he amended quickly, as she turned in time to see the precarious structure lean dangerously to one side and begin to come apart.

"Someone might need some real first aid in a minute." Britta commented drolly, coming to join them at the table, followed by Shirley and Pierce.

Pierce unwittingly still wore Britta's excuse for a head bandage.

"I think the course was niiicccee." Shirley decided in her honey sweet voice, "You never know when you may have to be good Samaritans and help someone who is hurt."

"Bah, it was a waste of time, I knew all of this anyway!" Pierce claimed loudly, to the exasperation of Britta. Jeff grinned to himself, knowing Pierce it wasn't the first time he had mentioned this fact.

Troy and Abed finally came back to join their study group, the pair were still largely clad in the white crepe bandages and had never looked happier.

"I don't know if I told you Jeff, but I was made an honorary chief of an ambulance station this one time." Pierce rambled on, ignoring the lack of interest from all parties at the table.

"Were you disappointed to find out it was nothing like being an Indian chief?" Jeff retorted sarcastically.

"Well I did assume there would be some headdress of some kind." The older man admitted.

"You can be Chief without a headdress?" Troy picked up, his eyes widening in realisation

"I also thought there would be more casino gambling." The moist towelette heir added in displeasure after a moment of thought.

Ignoring the blatant racism of their friend, the group's attention was drawn back to Annie as she struggled to remove the last of the tape.

"And here I thought you shaved not waxed." Jeff commented with his typical smart-arse grin, when she squeaked from the pain of yanking off the adhesive strip.

"You're the one who used so much of the blimming stuff." She replied frostily, massaging her reddened thigh.

"You don't have to shave your legs to meet the image of female beauty created by men and the teen magazines, Annie." Britta interjected shrilly, to various moans and groans from the group.

_The last thing in the world we want is Annie listening to Britta and going Au Natural, _Jeff thought in horror. The other males in the room were thinking something similar, except for Abed who was contemplating the implications of Britta's outburst.

"So that is why you are almost always wearing jeans and trousers." Abed revealed somewhat cryptically.

"Huh?" Troy and Pierce asked together in confusion.

"Britta doesn't shave her legs regularly." Abed concluded simply.

Troy looked a bit taken back and the woman in question rushed to explain.

"I do too! Occasionally." She protested with a pout before her voice trailed off, "It looks funny wearing a dress with hairy legs."

The study group broke into laughter at her hypocrisy, but was interrupted by a high pitched, siren coming their way.

* * *

"Deano deano deano deano deano deano deano." Dean Pelton shrieked madly in imitation of a siren, proudly managing to incorporate his position into the noise.

He minced into the study room in a pair of very tight green overalls, with medical patches on the front and a badge with the letters BLS stamped on the shoulder.

He came to a stop uncomfortably close to Jeff and addressed the disinterested group.

"We have an emergency!" He declared excitedly in his nasally voice, "After the deansasterous semester last year with the crazy Ben Chang, Greendale is critical!"

His voice seemed to catch and lose a lot of the enthusiasm he previously held.

"Seriously, enrolment is at an all time low and so are our finances, Greendale is on the brink of dying here."

Noone looked at the least suprised by this revelation.

Remembering why he had come in to interrupt the friends he suddenly perked up.

"Which is why, when an opportunity came to revive our community college, I couldn't refuse." He continued.

"Well that certainly sounds like Greendale; willing to try anything to make money or enrolments." Jeff commented derisively.

"Thank you Jeffery." The dean tittered, misinterpreting his words and shooting out a hand to caress Jeff's shoulder. The ex-lawyer shuddered at the unzipped front of the bald man's overly tight uniform; it betrayed the unfortunate fact that the weirdo wasn't wearing anything under the overalls.

"Seriously, does nobody remember the blood drive?" Jeff pressed the group, pushing away the Deans groping hand.

There was a collective muttering from the group at the memory of donating blood for their school.

Troy folded his arms triumphantly,

"I told you blood is supposed to stay in the body." He reminded them cheerfully, his religion not allowing him to receive or donate blood.

"And we now know that there are limits to how much we can legally take from our students." The dean admitted.

"Unless you are Britta, who just passes out and needs all hers put back in." Pierce chuckled.

The group once more had a laugh at the blonde's expense before Dean Pelton cut through them.

"We can go back to laughing at Britta later, don't you want to hear my amazing solution?" he asked the group.

A heavy silence hung in the air, as noone answered and instead shot candid looks at Jeff, who just shrugged and reached for his phone.

Annie finally broke, making an offended 'Ohhh' noise at her friend's indiscretion and looked up at the Dean with her sweet smile on.

"Of course we do Dean." She answered him kindly, sending a pointed glare at their leader, who threw his hands up in exasperation.

"Thank you Annie," The Dean beamed, "Well the local council was trying to cut costs and asked whether we would be willing to restart the Greendale volunteer Ambulance Service. They were willing to fund a training program and some start up costs, as well as paying Greendale handsomely for providing the public service."

He announced with obvious glee, not disheartened at all by his less then enthusiastic response from the leader of the group.

"So it was cheaper to try and get us to do it rather then paid professionals?" Jeff concluded.

Troy and Abed however, looked at each other, excited at the prospect and nodded their heads frantically in agreement. Shirley and Annie were discussing the idea, both fired up by the chance to do some good in the world. Britta eagerly started flicking through the syllabus the Dean had passed her, to see if there was much training around homeopathic medicine.

Even Pierce seemed to be amiable to the announcement of this new course and he raised his hand in question at the Dean.

"Does this station have a Chief yet?"

The group all seemed to look at Jeff, awaiting his reaction to the new course.

His expression was serious as he looked from one friend to the next.

"Do you really think Greendale is the right place to be trying to teach people how to save lives? We seem to have at least one death in the hallways each semester and our Professor's track records seem to speak for themselves." He responded cynically

There were murmurs of agreement from the others as they were unable to deny the truth of the statement. One person remained resolute on the idea and she shot a pleading doe-eyed look at Jeff.

"Did I mention it is worth a good ten credits and is largely practical based?" The Dean chimed in, trying to win over his favourite. He knew if he caved in Jeff, the others would certainly follow.

Winger sighed at the girl with the soft eyes, he could deny nothing of. He was sure that he would regret this.

"What sort of training do we need to do?" He finally relented.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N- **Thanks for all the reviews and feedback. Here is the second chapter, if there is too much jargon in it let me know and I can maybe reword or explain things a bit better.

* * *

It was six weeks of classroom work for the applicants to reach the required standard to man an ambulance. This time didn't seem to go very quickly, despite Abed declaring a training montage and playing inspirational nineties rock. From the first aid course they had been doing, they progressed onto using tourniquets, recording vital signs, and advanced injury assessment.

Troy and Abed raced each other, pumping up the blood pressure cuffs until the first person's arm turned blue. Jeff took the easy way out and placed the cuff that was attached to the heart monitor around Annie's arm. She scowled at his corner cutting, as he pressed the button labelled NIBP and let the machine do the work for him.

Pierce refused altogether because he insisted he had done hundreds during his time as station Chief.

They learnt to use advanced extrication devices, used for removing patients from crashed cars and tight spaces.

Jeff volunteered to be spinally immobilised and picked up using the splitting, Scoop Stretcher, figuring it would be a great way to avoid some work. He was right in that respect, but ended up with a crick in his neck after wearing the stiff Cervical Stabilisation Collar for the better part of half an hour. The only consolation had been having Annie hold his head in place the whole time; it made up for the fact that they almost left him bound up over lunch as a spiteful joke.

* * *

Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) was Jeff's favourite part of the course by far.

He got the chance to show off his toned arms during chest compressions and then there was the opportunity to watch Annie practice. The four males of the study group sat on their table in a happy, dazed stupor while they watched their young friend bounce up and down on the mannequin. Given her standard choice of clothes and the action required in chest compressions, it was a marvellous sight for Jeff to behold. His irritation was caught by the fact that it was display he had to share with the other guys too, as Annie unwittingly put on a show for them all. Regardless, he couldn't blame Troy and Abed for doing their special slapping handshake when she had finished.

It did seem like an event worth celebrating.

"That was pretty good right guys?" a flushed Annie asked at the end of her cycle.

"Uh yeah great Annie," Jeff stuttered in honest reply as the boobspell was broken.

The other performances on the manakin were less then satisfactory.

Britta hesitantly placed hands on the pale rubber skinned dummy, the unnatural feel and appearance creeped her out. Also her bizarre fear that she was sometimes viewed as no different to the oversized doll.

The fact that Pierce insisted on giving the resuscitation dummy mouth to mouth each time he practiced on it wasn't helping either. Especially since they had a bag mask to provide breaths for the mannequin and because he was slipping a bit to much tongue for a lifesaving attempt. Even for Pierce it was pretty bad and the group gagged and shuddered in disgust.

"Gross!" Annie accurately summed up.

Shirley performed some half-hearted CPR, but had to voice her offence that all the dummies were 'white, skinny little bimbos' as she put it. A phrasing that didn't exactly help Britta's fears.

"Troy the mannequin is not a trampoline, you are not just trying to get the highest bounce possible." Annie reprimanded him severely, as the young man started his cycle.

Troy's head hung and he stopped trying to get some 'air-time' at the top of each bouncing thrust. He had significantly less fun after that.

Jeff didn't know who was worse when it come to being overenthusiastic; Troy or Abed .

The amateur filmmaker felt compelled to re-enact his favourite lifesaving scenes from various medical dramas or action movies.

"Don't you dare die on me!" Abed yelled dramatically, between compressions.

He paused to slap the dummy instead of ventilating it.

"Come on! You've never given up on anything in your life, so live damn it!" He yelled passionately in the voice of his favourite hero of the day.

Jeff broke up the performance as his friend started to get broken up over the 'dead' body.

"There was nothing you could do." Annie reassured the broody acting Abed, buying into his fantasy.

* * *

As part of the resuscitation, they were taught more advanced skills too, like placing the basic nasal and oral airways as well as performing defibrillation.

The defibrillator, or 'the neat machine which shocks people back to life' as Troy called it, was the final part of their training for cardiac arrest. Everyone was a little disappointed to see that the movies and TV had lied to them and there were no longer using the twin plastic paddles. Greendale's equipment was old and shitty, but they at least had the budget to purchase the standard, adhesive defibrillator pads.

They looked like two giant square stickers and as the group found out, they were extremely sticky. It took Troy and Jeff five whole minutes to rip the pair off Pierce's chest, why he had thought it was a good idea to try them on in the first place was beyond them.

"Make sure you put them back in the packet once you are done, because we are going to have to reuse them." The Dean informed the group, as he popped in to see how the group was doing (perv on Jeffery doing CPR).

The administrator was unfazed by the seven incredulous looks he got back at this concept.

"What? We are trying to save money here." Dean Pelton informed them, as if it was common sense.

"Typical Greendale." Jeff commented sarcastically as Shirley reluctantly handed him back the two gross, hair-covered adhesive pads.

Fortunately, for use on the mannequins there was a special set of leads that plugged straight into the dummies chest in the correct placement. It looked like the Greendale School of Electrical Engineering had made the leads themselves and Britta may have got a small electric shock off them when she doing CPR.

"Typical Greendale," Jeff repeated to himself.

* * *

The final component of their training was a driving course, tailored specifically to emergency ambulance response. What that meant to the group, was a license to flagrantly disregard the road rules and speed to their hearts content.

_Now this is a course I could get into.._ Jeff thought to himself as he looked at the run down Greendale racetrack, where they were going to practice their high speed driving in.

To his horror there turned out to be a surprising amount of theory before they even let him climb in the cab. But when they eventually did, it was totally worth it.

Jeff dropped his aviators down over his eyes and started up the grunty practice ambulance. A cool grin besmirched his face and inadvertently allowed his friends to see how much he was enjoying the moment. Beside him, a bored looking Professor Garner barely looked up from his novel as Jeff peeled the top-heavy vehicle off the mark.

In the ambulance they did a number of high-speed laps with several obstacles and then backed through a line of cones. The driver's grin didn't falter at any time.

"Both hands on the wheel Mr. Winger." Was Garner's only criticism, when Jeff became too relaxed and casual in the drivers seat and dared to rest an arm out the window.

_The reprimand was completely worth it, to perform the cool gesture at such high speed, _the ex-lawyer thought to himself with a smug grin.

He even surrendered to giving Troy a lazy high five, when he swapped out to let the younger male sit his assessment.

* * *

The young Ms Eddison was the first person waiting for Jeff when he got back off the track and up to the tiering stand seating, where the other students were waiting their turn.

Her sweet face was alight with a genuine smile, as the tall man approached and she fell into step beside him.

"If I didn't know any better, I would think that you are actually enjoying this course." She lightly teased, taking a seat beside him with the others.

Jeff struggled to hide his grin and fervently started to deny the prosecution's outlandish claims.

"No way, all this learning to do two months practical work on a Greendale run ambulance. It is a lot of work for a measly ten credits." He snorted in protest.

Annie eyed him suspiciously, not entirely believing his negative stance on things. She had noticed his rare smile seemingly flit about on its own accord; during a couple of the days they had spent training. _The last time was probably during the CPR practice_, she noted with interest. It also seemed for once to be a class that Jeff was actually pretty good at, one of the few where he wasn't constantly bugging her for help before exams.

"You actually seem to be picking it up pretty well," She blurted, with a trace of surprise and was that jealousy? Pride?

Jeff shrugged at her observation and dismissed it in his usual sort of manner.

"It is all pretty common sense really, air goes in and out, blood goes round and round. You try and keep it that way." He casually summed up their learning to date.

"That might be oversimplifying it a bit Jeff." Annie pointed out, pouting and tossing her straight, mahogany hair off her shoulder.

"Is it Annie?" Jeff posed to her, lifting an eyebrow questioningly.

"Besides, if we are doing this whole ambulance thing, I plan on doing the driving rather then treating the patient in the back." He slyly added.

Annie's pout deepened at his selfish claim and she felt inclined to call him on it.

"Oh yeah that would be just like Jeff Winger wouldn't it? Avoid helping people and just turn up to have fun driving like a teenager." She accused, annoyed that he was shying from something so important and something that it seemed like he was actually good at.

"It's an ambulance not your Lexus." Britta reminded him mockingly from the seat behind, unimpressed by his carefree show of bravado at the wheel.

"Even Jeff can't look cool driving a shitty, broken down germ bus."

"You must be looking forward to this Britta," Jeff shot back, "You get to drive a vehicle without having to push start it first or jump the battery."

Britta folded her arms defensively at the crack about her own junky car.

"Material possessions like a car just aren't as important to me as they are to you guys." She declared pretentiously.

"Yet she remains highly defensive of her property.." Abed cleverly noted, pointing out the inconsistency.

"I think what you meant to say, is that you are too poor to buy a decent car or get repairs done on your current one." Jeff corrected Britta easily, his case ever building with Abed's helpful comment.

"Of all of us, you'd expect Shirley to be the best at this kind of driving." Pierce piped up, sounding surprisingly thoughtful.

"Thank you Pierce." Shirley cooed, before her smile broke, as she realised what she had just said.

The group waited for the other bigoted shoe to drop.

"That ugly great people mover you drive already is about the same size as an ambulance and your youthful years of driving stolen cars must give you a pretty good handle of driving fast." Pierce explained innocently, causing a widespread murmuring of shock and disappointment.

"That van you bought is quite large." Abed conceded to Pierce's delight and Shirley's dismay.

"Abed, don't encourage him." Jeff warned and was drowned out as Troy pulled to a screeching halt out front of the stands.

A humongous grin plastered his face as he disembarked from the still shaking vehicle.

"See? Now there was some sharp driving," Pierce addressed the group in approval, "And he owes it all to Grand Theft Auto." He finished triumphantly, as if Troy's driving had just proven his point.

"The 2001 video game?" Abed asked as a point of clarification.

"What video game?" Pierce asked in confusion, getting up from his seat to go for his turn.

"and that guy wants to be our station chief?" Jeff depreciatingly muttered.

* * *

"Congratulations on passing the training," Dean Pelton nattered in his nasally voice. The class of twenty were back in the study room at the end of the training to get equipment and a briefing for the second stage of the course.

"Here are you boots and your uniforms." The Dean revealed giving one to each of the students in the study group as they came up to him.

"Is it me or does that new guy kinda remind you of StarBurns?" Britta whispered to Troy in front of her, as they waited in line to get their gear from the Dean. It came with a congratulatory hug too if you were Jeff it seemed.

Troy turned to face the rear of the line as subtly as he could, which wasn't very subtle at all. Spying the man, he considered the nervous, grungy looking student who had suddenly turned up at the start of the new semester. It was quite blatanly the same guy, but with his hair dyed blonde.

"He is weird and smells like salami." Troy mused, before remembering something that came up during his memorial and grief counselling.

"Did you really sleep with StarBurns?" He asked Britta in surprise.

Britta's colour rose at the question, she didn't really want to answer that one. Especially not with Troy, of all people. There had been this connection growing between the two over the last couple of months and she didn't want to jeopardise that by bringing up what a mess she could be. He had enough to worry about studying at the Air Conditioner Repair School part time.

"Uh, uh," She stuttered under his scrutiny and luckily saw an end to the line in front of them.

"Ah you're up Troy, go get your uniform." She dodged, pushing Troy up towards the Dean.

Dean Pelton of course headed in for a hug on his second favourite student, but was promptly fended by the experienced footballer. The fend carried maybe a little more venom then it should, courtesy of an unanswered question in Troy's mind.

* * *

With a hurried apology and thanks to the Dean, Troy took his gear and moved over to where the others were waiting. Jeff held up the pair of overalls to his body, hoping to god that it wasn't the same pair that he had seen the dean wearing the other day.

"G.A.S? What the hell is this Dean?" He demanded turning his uniform to show the embroided patch on the front left breast. "Are we pumping petrol now instead?"

"It is not Gas Jeffery, it is G.A.S it stands for the Greendale Ambulance Service." The Dean corrected him quickly, trying to placate his irritable favourite.

"Of course it does." Jeff replied sarcastically, throwing his green uniform in a pile on top of the black boots that finished the ensemble.

Dean Pelton's enthusiasm wasn't dampened however and he went on to address the class, reminding them of what was going to happen now.

"So from here you are going to be divided up into four different watch shifts and will start responding to emergency calls in the greater Greendale Area." This was widely accepted by indifference rather then his anticipated excitement.

"Come on people get excited here, you are all signed off and ready to work on the road!" The Dean encouraged brightly. It drew a smattering of positive response, mainly from Annie, Troy and Abed who were genuinely keen to get out there.

"The ambulances are parked up in shed H on the far side of campus and we have set up one of the outlying Theoretical Phys Ed. classrooms as a station. There are couches, beds and a TV for you to use when you are not busy on shift and the trucks can be parked right outside of it."

That was more encouraging news to the study group and Jeff imagined spending his time lounging around there with the intermittent break for a callout or two.

His imagining was broken by the Dean once more.

"I have been told though, that the ambulances haven't been used in a while and may need a bit of a cleanup first." He admitted guiltily, holding his palms out in a gesture of surrender.

Before they knew what had happened, the study group found themselves the sole occupants of the room, everyone else had scarpered.

"Great." Jeff deadpanned.

"How dirty can they be?" Annie supplied positively, squeezing his arm supportively.

* * *

"I take it back," That same Annie blurted an hour later when they stood staring at the filthy vehicles. "This is beyond dirty."

"Forget how clean they are, I'm wondering if these junkers will even start." Shirley admitted pulling open the creaky door on one of the empty trucks.

With key in the ignition she twisted firmly.

A dull whirring sounded within the vehicle as the starter-motor turned over feebly. After about half a minute of the gruelling noise, something finally caught and the engine spluttered to life. The rest of the group followed Shirley's example and were lucky when Troy and Abed's ambulance also found life at the turn of a key.

Pierce and Jeff both tried on the third vehicle to no avail and finally got round to popping the hood. They were surprised to find that their vehicle didn't even have a motor in it, but it had been a great habitat for a family of racoons.

"Well it is probably quite economical, fuel wise." Jeff quipped, slamming the hood back down to the skittering of small furry feet.

"I've heard of horse power but this is just silly." Pierce tried in weak attempt of a joke, the women all gave him a forced smile as a reward for its inoffensive nature.

Troy and Abed followed their role model and opened the front of their vehicle too.

"Awww ours only has a motor in it." Troy exclaimed in disappointment at his discovery.

"And a rat," Abed amended, as a dull brown rodent scampered down from some hideout in the metalwork.

Troy joined the women in screaming, leaping off the ground and taking refuge on the bonnet of the nearest vehicle. Thankfully the rat felt much like Jeff and didn't want to stay there. He watched it go almost enviously, before turning back to the problem at hand.

"Fine we only have two trucks, Troy find you balls and drive that rust heap over to our new station." Jeff ordered, taking charge like always and trying to just get things over with as quickly as possible.

He reluctantly climbed in the other working ambulance himself and slowly coaxed it out of the decrepit garage.

_This had better be worth the credits…_


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N-** Thanks again for your reviews, have another chapter for your trouble.

* * *

It took hours of hard scrubbing to get the two white trucks anywhere near presentable.

They worked in pairs cleaning the vehicles, apart from Shirley who opted to head inside and make sure the station was up to scratch.

Progress was slow with many distractions and complications presenting themselves to the group. The ever-present threat of a waterfight loomed, like a spectre over the event, as they worked in close proximity to each other and lots of water.

It was too much to ask of Troy and Abed not to mess around when they were supposed to be helping. Although, their re-enactment of the sword fight from the Count of Monte Cristo with just their long handled brushes was a sight to behold.

Jeff too felt the playful urge, despite his determination to finish the job as quickly as possible and to the bare minimum standard. With Annie leaning forward to scrub at one of the running boards, it was far too greater temptation not to squirt her from behind with the hose. It was well worth the outrage and slapped arm he received for his dousing and it helped distract him from the other temptations that suggested themselves.

Water was also a great tool for putting Britta in her place when she got to vocal or preachy on the various subjects they discussed while they worked.

The group got their first chance to practice some real first aid, when a whopping big spider that was disturbed from an equipment locker bit Pierce.

"Damn, that thing was a monster," Jeff announced seriously, returning from his manly duty of slaying the guilty arachnid.

"I still say we didn't have to kill it, we could have released it into the wild instead." Britta rebelled, earning a respectful nod from Troy. He didn't really care what they did to the spider, as long as he wasn't the one who had to do it.

"Has Pierce's arm died and fallen off yet?" Jeff asked with a trace of hope to his voice.

"No Jeff," Annie informed him patiently, but a little concerned, "It is rather swollen though."

She held an ice pack to his forearm where the dual puncture marks were.

The surrounding area was red, shiny and stretched tight in response to whatever the hell was on the gargantuan spiders teeth.

"Oh my god, maybe Pierce will get super spider powers!" Troy suddenly realised, looking at his best friend, as if to confirm it was possible.

Abed nodded frantically in excited agreement, in his vast calculating mind he was already rapidly drafting up ideas for a costume that Pierce could wear.

"Yeah, but only if that spider's particular power is to get infected and die of septicaemia." Britta commented wryly, not being a big fan of superheros in general. Especially ones that perpetuated gender stereotypes by rescuing a constant damsel in distress.

"Why would a spider want that power to begin with Britta?" Troy demanded, upset at her insensitively and refusal to believe.

Jeff stepped in and cut across the insanity when Troy and Abed started encouraging Pierce to see if he could stick to the wall.

"Fine, if Annie thinks the bite is looking pretty nasty then Pierce, you had better head across to the medical centre." He turned to face the girl who was treating him, "Do you want to go with him so he doesn't try fighting crime or web-slinging on the way?"

"Sure Jeff," Annie agreed, pleased at his confidence of her medical opinion.

She took Pierce's un-swollen and gross arm and led him off towards the Greendale Student Health Centre.

Troy and Abed were also beaming at Jeff for making SpiderMan references just for them. As Abed already knew, the Ex-lawyer was actually a bit of a comic book buff himself.

"Spider-Gramps?" Troy tried out loud one of the superhero names he had been thinking of since his friend was bitten.

"The Senile-Spider?" Jeff actually suggested, getting in on the fun and sharing a smile with the two remaining guys. Abed was already constructing the first twelve part comic series in his head for the Senile-Spider; Senior Superhero.

"The Archaic-Arachnid?" Britta came up with hopefully, much to the disapproval of the boys.

"That is just terrible." Abed bluntly stated, "Both conceptually and phonetically."

"Wow, way to Britta superheroes." Jeff declared in a tone of false admiration.

Troy sent the woman and verb in question a guilty look, but was inclined to nod in agreement with the others. It was pretty bad.

* * *

The Britta-bashing was broken up once more by the arrival of the Dean. He had performed another one of his rapid costume changes and this time was in one of the more disgusting ensembles the group had ever witnessed.

"Oh that's just not right." Shirley commented, speaking what was on everyone's mind, as she emerged from the station and spotted the man.

Dean Pelton was unfortunately dressed like one of the girls you see at a bikini carwash, with a pair of truly tiny Daisy Duke denim shorts and a ridiculously tight, white t-shirt that have been tied in a knot to expose plenty of midriff.

"Oh is the carwash finished?" He exclaimed in his typical, nasally fashion, as he saw Jeff pour out the water from one of the cleaning buckets.

Noone answered him; they were frozen in disgust at the sight that assaulted them. Jeff summed their feelings up pretty well by vomiting in his now empty bucket. Britta desperately reached to take the vessel off him as the same urge overwhelmed her too.

Troy gave a little broken sob and Shirley was grimacing, muttering a stream of Hail Mary under her breath. Only Abed seemed relatively unaffected by the sight, confused, a little repulsed, but functional.

"Oh god are you alright Jeffery?" The Dean enquired shrilly, flouncing over to the tall man and completely ignoring Britta blowing chunks beside him.

Jeff dry retched again with the abomination of sight even closer to him.

"There must be something going around, I mean something more then just the usual dysentery from the cafeteria burritos." The Dean conceded.

"I just saw young Annie Edison escorting Pierce across to the sickbay too." He explained in concern. The creepy little man tried rubbing reassuring circles on Jeff's back, but his hands were frantically fended off.

"Oh no that was different, Pierce was bitten by a spider." Abed mentioned, clearing up that point of confusion. He went on to murky the waters again though by adding the implied movie-verse complications that he eagerly anticipated.

"Pierce needs to be under observation to see if he develops the proportional strength, speed and reflexes of a spider."

"Oh. Well I guess he can't be the station manager then can he? That means that it will have to be your role then Jeffery." Dean Pelton concluded slowly, like he was throwing the man a huge honour.

Jeff wiped his mouth and sighed, having sensed he was having more work thrust upon him.

_What is with the Dean and trying to thrust things upon me?_ He wondered bitterly.

"What do I have to do?" Jeff grumbled at the small skinhead man.

"Oh not much extra Jeffery, it just means you are in charge of the station and all the officers on shift. You just have to fix any problems staff have and provide additional medical oversight." The Dean explained.

"In charge, fix any problems huh? How is that different to what I do for these guys already?" Jeff muttered to himself.

"What will Pierce do? He can't be on the road with his bad arm." Abed asked curiously.

"Well we do have some spots left as emergency dispatchers, I'm sure his experience could be well utilised there." Dean Pelton considered, stroking his bare chin.

Jeff was distracted from the weird Dean's rambling, as he spotted Annie walking back across the carpark towards them. The sun caught on her pale skin, tantalisingly and he couldn't help but notice the slight feminine sway of her walk.

Hypnotised by the gentle sashay of her hips, it took him a few seconds to realise that Dean was holding something out for him. Grateful for the dark sunglasses that hid his gaze, Jeff finally took notice.

_Better not be another one of his creepy friendship bracelets, _Jeff thought darkly, but he reached out his hand to accept the mystery item anyway.

His hand closed around hard plastic and he pulled back to look at the small rectangular item in his hand. It was a discreetly sized electronic device, with a belt clip on it and a small hard plastic line along one side for a screen.

"Alright a Tamagotchi!" Troy celebrated happily across from him and Jeff realised the Dean had given one to each of them.

"No Troy, it is a pager." Annie corrected him as she finally arrived and was handed one too.

Her young friend looked slightly disappointed at that news.

"You guys are on the first shift tonight, it starts at 1800 so enjoy!" The Dean revealed before striding off with a not so feminine slink of his hips.

Britta and Jeff both reached for the bucket again.

* * *

Jeff of course turned up for his first shift at 1805. His boots were casually unzipped along with most of his jumpsuit and he carried his pillow from home under an arm. Throwing his bedding in one of the three double bedrooms, he started having his first real poke around the station.

There were a couple of unfashionable couches set at a right angle and facing an older model, forty-two inch television on the wall. Behind the couches, a large bare table, almost like the one in their study room, was situated and surrounded by chairs. The kitchen was pretty spartan with a beat up looking stove, a prehistoric microwave and a fridge that sounded like it had a lawnmower motor in it. _Or maybe that is where the engine from the other ambulance went,_ Jeff joked to himself with a smirk.

An office exited out into the makeshift garage that had been erected and a small room of to the side of that was a stores room. Entering the office, he found a set of keys with his name on it, so he scooped those up and headed off to find the others.

He found them in the garage, where Annie was stomping her feet and carrying on about something. Jeff could see her aggravated expression from the doorway and quickly tried to slink away behind the first ambulance.

Annie was not someone he liked to deal with when she was upset. It seemed like the more distressed she was, the greater the pressure there was on him to fix the situation, albeit usually one that he had caused in the first place. What was more unsettling to him, was that as time went on, he found himself more compelled to help her with less and less resistance. She was breaking him down and making him hers, whether he liked it or not.

Unfortunately for Jeff, the hyper-alert girl spotted him before he could disappear and she charged him down with a passion.

"You're late." She accused heatedly, "We have so many problems already and now I'm told by the others that you are supposed to be the station manager." She seemed outraged and surprised by the position being given to him.

"I got caught up in something before I left," He admitted trying to defuse the situation.

_Yeah, doing his hair,_ Annie suspected harshly, as she looked over his always cool styling.

"And yes the Dean made me the station manager today. Would you have preferred Pierce?" Jeff continued setting his trap.

"Well, no…" Annie trailed off, unable to argue with that logic.

"You wanted the job didn't you? A managerial role, more advanced medical interventions, it was everything you could ask for." He concluded, turning it around back on her in typical Winger fashion.

Annie was taken back by the accusation, partly because he was right.

"Er no.. Yes," She finally admitted biting her lip in frustration, which only grew as she saw his look of triumph.

"But you won't even take the position seriously and I scored better then you in all the tests we did in training anyway." She pointed out shrill with indignation.

"Actually sweetie," Shirley cut in as the others had slowly drifted over.

"Jeffery scored as well as you did, if not a little better." She hesitantly revealed.

* * *

"What?" the group double took at the news.

"I was sitting between you two in class to prevent any handholding or indecent thoughts and I saw every grade you got back." Shirley explained in her protective mothering voice.

"Our Jeffery did really well." She finished proudly giving him a friendly squeeze of the arm.

The young brunette was lost for words and confused internally by the new information, also by the idea that Shirley was trying to keep some distance between the two.

Part of her was jealous and upset for being robbed of the position and being beaten by someone in academia. Another aspect seemed to rear its head though and brighten her at the prospect that maybe Jeff had actually worked hard for once and was deserving of the position.

Her cynical side began to cut through on those thoughts, _or he just coasted through and got something handed to him, like usual._

But her pride at the man she had been grooming was overwhelming her ego and she surrendered to giving him the smallest of smiles.

Then she remembered that he had turned up late and they had problems with the station already. The smile vanished.

"Fine then, Jeff is in charge, now lets see if he is up to the job." She challenged.

"Good, engaging Jeff's ego has always been a good way to motivate him in the past." Abed agreed with an approving nod.

The revelation seemed to go over the narcissist's head and he turned to Annie, ready to go.

"What's the problem we have?" He asked her, finding her eyes and holding them.

"The Dean has ordered cylinders of Helium rather than Oxygen." Annie declared in exasperation.

"I don't think it is a big problem," Troy said in a high Mickey Mouse voice, before giggling at his own noise. The short cylinder at his foot accounted for his new tone that actually made him sound a lot like one of the members of the Lollipop Guild.

"I agree with Alvin here," Britta concurred and jerking a thumb towards the grinning Troy. "What's the difference?"

"You mean apart from the whole Chipmunk effect right?" Shirley confirmed.

"It is not a hundred percent Oxygen?" Annie cried like it was obvious and a crucial difference.

"Okay, okay, I'll try and sort it." Jeff surrendered, seeing the actual danger to the public and the distress it was causing Annie.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and reluctantly dialled the one number he never wanted to dial.

"Oh my god Jeffery, you finally called me back!" The high-pitched voice of Craig Pelton shrieked through the tiny speaker.

_Does he have helium at home too? _He smugly thought at that perpetual whiney tone.

Jeff stepped around the corner to discuss the situation with the pervert, who left at least one voicemail a week on his phone.

"Have you guy's finished checking off your trucks?" Annie took over and asked the gathered crews.

"Yup, we got plenty of Helium." Troy confirmed in a squeal.

"Uhh." Annie groaned in frustration, "What about the rest of your equipment?"

Abed answered mechanically. "We are fully stocked with all the equipment Greendale could afford."

"Well that is reassuring." Britta lamented. Troy offered her his cylinder in an attempt to cheer her up; she shrugged and took him up on it.

Before she took could indulge in the tone lowering breath of the devil, Jeff returned looking annoyed.

"The stupid Dean says that Helium is so much cheaper then Oxygen so we are going to have to make do." Jeff explained with an expression of extreme irritation.

Annie and Shirley made feminine noises of outrage.

"That can't be ethical." Britta declared angrily.

"No, but since it does contain a reasonable portion of Oxygen it can still be used within reason." Abed informed the friends.

"Well I guess we are looking at using less Oxygen for cardiac patients." Annie finally admitted, always able to find the silver lining in any situation.

"We'll survive," Jeff concluded in appreciation of her positive input.

"Some of patients may not though." He muttered under his breath.

* * *

Including the ambulance they used for driver training into the new fleet, it gave them three functional ambulances to use and the group paired up onto each truck.

Troy and Abed of course, teamed up to man one vehicle that they affectionately referred to as the Batmobile; because they got to drive fast together and be excited.

"Also because, you know, Abed is Batman, even Christian Bale admits it." Troy explained when Annie was foolish enough to ask. Even living with the pair she had not fully adjusted to their shenanigans.

After Jeff had forbidden the first pair from responding in costume, he assigned Shirley and Britta to the second truck in the garage and designated them Greendale 2. This left him and his favourite girl to crew Greendale 1, which just so happened to be the more powerful driver training ambulance.

Annie had reason to suspect that neither of those facts were a coincidence.

With no jobs coming up on their pagers and nothing else to do, the team settled down on the couches to watch some TV.

The pizzas they ordered arrived quickly and the study group was stoked to find out that they received a significant discount as an emergency service provider.

Jeff kicked his boots up on the small coffee table in the living room of the station and helped himself to a slice of the healthy gourmet pizza he had ordered. As station manager he obviously claimed the remote and found a decent action movie to watch.

_I could get used to this, _he thought contently with his feet up, his friends beside him and a slice in one hand.

He had jinxed it of course and in the next instant a tremendous, screeching tone rung throughout the station.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N-** Jeez, turns out a few people are actually reading this damn thing huh? Some of them are even reviewing it too, which is kinda cool. Glad to hear so many of you enjoying the silly idea I had.

**Note:** I am claiming some artistic licence with a few of the comedic additions to a working ambulance service, things like the fact that the regulators would be incompatible from O2 to Helium cylinders. Mostly small geeky stuff that you wouldn't notice if you aren't in the industry. I have used a model that is loosely based on what we use here, so you will have to excuse me if it is a little different to how Ambulance services operate in you country.

Enjoy.

**-Grey.**

* * *

"What the hell is that noise?" Jeff yelled over the offensive sound, whipping his head around the room in search of its source. The rest of the group mirrored his example and were trying to locate the distressing sound, while keeping their ears covered with clamped palms.

"Britta did you bring one of your retarded cats to shift with you?" Jeff accused heatedly.

The harsh tone cut to static before being replaced with a different Piercing noise. A familiar cough opened the message, as Pierce Hawthorne's magnified voice thundered through the station.

"Hey can you guys hear me? You've got a damn callout to get to." Their elderly friend informed them over the hastily set up PA system, which had been routed solely to the station.

"What is it Pierce? Who needs to go?" Troy questioned the speaker loudly, his excitement peaking at the prospect of his first job.

"He can't hear you sweetie." Shirley mentioned quietly, ever patient with the young man that she kind of thought of as a son.

"Ah you are responding priority 1 to a 29 Alfalfa at number 8 Bennelong Place." Pierce continued, having finally found the job information he had to give the crew.

"I think he means a 29 Alpha." Abed concluded, mentally adjusting for the older mans mistake in his phonetic alphabet.

Under his breath he whispered, "Classic mishearing gag, absolute sitcom staple."

"What is a 29 Alpha?" Jeff asked, it made no difference to him whether it was an Alpha or an Alfalfa, since he had no idea what the different dispatch codes were anyway. He knew that the priority denoted how urgently the crew was to respond to the incident, but he hadn't bothered to learn what alphanumerical code corresponded to each condition.

"A 29 Alpha is a toe or finger caught in the tap of a bath." The autistic man answered confidently, having memorised the code system used by the Greendale dispatch.

"We have a code specifically for that?" Britta asked doubtfully.

"Just be thankful it isn't a 29 Bravo; something else stuck in the tap." Abed reflected with a cocked eyebrow.

"So who goes to it then? Shouldn't Pierce send the job details to one crew's pagers?" Shirley checked in concern, whoever was hurt she hoped that they weren't creating a delay for them.

As expected everyone turned to look at the ex-lawyer in the room, who in turn looked wistfully back at his half finished pizza.

"Troy, Abed, you guys have got this. It seems like the perfect job for you two." Jeff decided slyly, pointing at his chosen pair and hiding a smirk at the truth in his own words.

The excited pair looked over the moon at their tasking, gave their special handshake and dashed for the garage. The rest of the group returned to their seats, Jeff happily retrieved his fallen slice of pizza and resumed his casual slouch in the chair.

He heard the sirens kick into life behind him in the garage and they grew faint as the Greendale Ambulance crew was dispatched for the first time.

_Oh god what have I unleashed on the world?_ Jeff thought guiltily at the mental image of the two immature officers that were screaming off towards a hapless patient somewhere.

He had barely settled in when the accursed tone from before, buzzed the station and heralded another ambulance callout.

"Wow this is so much more fun then working on a stupid ambulance," The jumbo voice of their aged friend declared at the end of the horrid alarm.

"I have beer and chips and.. oh yeah another job has just come through. What did you say it was again Garret? Priority 1 to a 16 Unicorn on the Northbound highway 16." Pierce revealed, bragging about his working conditions, before stumbling through another emergency dispatch.

"I don't think it is an actual unicorn Annie." Jeff discouraged his partner with a smarmy smile, pretending to have misinterpreted her sudden jump in interest.

"Oh Jeff," She groaned in feigned exasperation, rolling those startling eyes of hers.

"You or us?" Britta asked him, their leader and holding a hand up to play paper, scissors, rock.

"Forget it," Jeff irritably disregarded her key decision making tool, "We'll go, I'm sick of all these damn interruptions."

With that, he strode for the door with Annie hot on his heels.

* * *

Just like he had promised, Jeff jumped behind the wheel and keyed the powerful engine to life. He quickly hid his pleased expression, before his colleague climbed in the passenger side and focused instead, on turning on his lights and sirens.

The high-pitched whine from the roof, drowned out even the din of the motor, as he shoved the vehicle into drive and effortlessly pulled out onto the street.

Before he knew it, Jeff was running traffic lights and stop signs, well exceeding the speed limit and enjoying every second of it. He took the nearest exit onto the highway and looked across at what his co-driver was up.

Annie was busy shrugging her shoulders and wiggling her way into a brightly fluorescent, green high-visibility jacket. It inaccurately read AMBLANCE on the back in large block letters with the Greendale Crest above it, the latter of which kind of explained the half-arsed spelling attempt.

His attention was robbed from the road by the interesting movements it took for her to put on the garment while seated and strapped in. Jeff's gaze may have lingered a little long and the whole ambulance shuddered, as its wheels ground against the rumble strip at the edge of the road.

"Jeff!" Annie cried in alarm, scolding him for his carelessness and completely unaware of the distraction she had provided. The driver focussed once more on the road and resolved never to mention to the girl how close she had brought him to crashing. The fact that she may have been hurt in the accident seemed unforgivable.

Up ahead on the freeway, traffic had slowed to a stop, flashing red and blues indicated the site of the incident.

"Where is you jacket?" Annie asked her friend once they had parked inside of the cordon provided by other emergency vehicles.

"I wasn't going to wear one." Jeff casually admitted popping the catch on his door to climb out.

Annie caught his arm before he could descend from the cab and pulled him back to face her.

"But Jeff it is a safety thing, we need to be easily seen." She insisted, her tone climbing an octave, as it always did when something wasn't unfolding exactly how she thought.

Funnily enough, he often seemed to be the cause of that.

Jeff shot her a long-suffering look and gently tried to pull back towards his exit.

"Easily seen by who Annie? The gathered photographers and news crews?" He responded sarcastically, when he felt she wasn't going to back down on the issue.

"I don't think so. Besides, they look so horrible and tacky." He finished, silently adding in his head that on her, there appeared to be an exception to the horrible part.

Annie huffed in offence to his rationale and quick dismissal of his own safety when traffic still moved past their location at speed. She bit her lip once more in silent frustration at the stubborn man.

_Superficial and selfish are his sword and shield, _she reminded herself and changed tactic.

"Well can you wear one for me then please Jeff?" She pleaded with soft eyes, her hand on his arm closed gently to add authenticity to her concern.

"I'd hate it if you were hit by a passing car." Annie confessed sweetly, exaggerating her fear only slightly.

Jeff found himself in the once more awkward position of having to compromise his comfort and ego for the girl who was asking something of him. He hesitated in fleeting resolve, which as usual, began to crumble and fall at the end of the day when she was involved. If only his resistance could cave a little further then it currently had, far enough to actually do something bold or talk to her about them.

"Fine," Jeff found himself relenting under her tender scrutiny and the knowledge that if the situation was reversed, he would have demanded the same of her. Annie's safety was always very much on the forefront of his mind.

Reluctantly he reached into the side pocket of the door and surrendered to putting on a thin, green high-vis vest.

Anxieties finally placated, Annie grabbed the trauma pack and led the way to see the patient.

* * *

A familiar policeman met the pair on their way over to the crash scene, it was the same officer they always saw when they had brushes with the law or happened to stage a fake murder scene as part of a conspiracy.

The cop in question was a bit taken back to see the new ambulance officers were familiar for these reasons.

"You two?" He checked suspiciously with a scrutinising look, as if to make sure it wasn't another unusual role-playing thing, like the weird Arab boy from her apartment did.

"Yeah it is us, Copra," Jeff confirmed dryly with the rotund, bearded man, whose name he had never bothered to learn.

"What have we got?" the impatient ambo cut to the chase.

Not overly displeased by the nickname, Officer Cackowski switched a glance between the tall paramedic and the shorter, pretty one bouncing with nervous energy beside him.

In a shrugging, what-the hell sort of motion, he escorted them towards the deformed wreck on the side of the road.

"One car, single occupant who was drunk and wearing his seatbelt, lost control and ran into the median barrier." The man in blue explained.

Annie nervously approached a little closer to the smashed car at the prompting nod from the single stabilising firemen, while Jeff hung back a little longer.

_Holy shit! That car is totalled! _His brain screamed, overwhelmed, nearing panic at sight of the destroyed car in front of him and the enormity of the whole situation.

His first impulse was to sweep up his partner, jump back in the ambulance and flee the chaotic scene. It was a course of action that the old Jeff may have pursued, but whether he liked to admit it or not, his time at community college had changed him. Somewhere along the line he had grown a conscience and he was pretty sure he knew who to blame for that.

_Come on Winger, keep it together for Annie; you have a job to do._ A small, brave part of his brain reprimanded him.

"Do you know how fast?" He asked the cop, in a voice that sounded a lot calmer then he felt.

"Maybe 70mph?" The officer guessed.

Jeff nodded, looking surprisingly thoughtful and moved in closer to see how Annie was getting on in her assessment.

The lithe brunette had actually climbed inside the car and was carefully leaning close to the restrained patient to hear his words over the loud background noise.

The patient was conscious and talking to her, but he looked pretty worse for wear. His head was ragged and bleeding from several locations, the scarlet streaked his long, dark hair and stained his face. Bloodshot eyes stared up at his angel of mercy and his teeth were gritted in agony. The cause of his pain was apparent when Annie noticed the deformity to the steering wheel; it was shaped like a wonky pretzel, courtesy of stopping really quickly against a solid object.

With nothing else to directly impact against the steering wheel, it was apparent to her that the patient's chest had probably done the damage to the object.

_Which can't be great for a person's sternum or ribs, _she figured bleakly, his laboured breathing a testament to the fact.

"Jeff, we need to collar him and get out of here quick." Annie decided, urgently calling out him.

For his part, Jeff gave her a brief nod and left her to sort the spinal immobilisation while he organised the extrication. It suddenly dawned on him the seriousness of the situation they were in and how much they both just fell back on their training to survive. For her, a strong theoretical knowledge and hours upon hours of practice made her slick with the equipment. For him, it was a cultivated common sense approach that relied heavily upon basic logic to dictate decisions. Emotions and morals took a backseat in this deliberation and could be rationalised or discredited in a verbose monologue later if need be.

Returning quickly with the long, flat spinal board, he found Annie stabilising the patient's head and calling for him to come apply the cervical collar.

Jeff looked around at the half dozen useless firemen standing about like tourists and he fired up at the girl.

"Damn it Annie, use your head. Get one of the Smokys' in there to hold the head, while you put it on." He berated, seeing the jump in logic at tying up more sets of qualified hands.

The lazy firecrew jumped at his suggestion and Annie relented her hold to one of them, while shooting Jeff an apologetic look. The vehicle was a soft-top convertible and Jeff took great pleasure in cutting away the last of the roof with a blade from one of the lounging firemen. Finally having something else to do, the boys in giant fireproof raincoats helped slide the patient up the board and lift him on it across to the awaiting ambulance stretcher.

Annie and Jeff followed their procedures for such circumstances and finished strapping and taping down their patient to the stretcher, so as to reduce any further movement or damage to a potentially compromised spinal chord.

Annie looked up as Jeff shunted the stretcher bound patient into the back.

"Maybe you should ride in the back with him." She suggested shyly, ashamed of herself for not thinking things through earlier with the collar.

"And miss out on driving? Not likely." Jeff joked with a chuff, before his face creased seriously.

"Besides, you have this one under control." He reassured her with a cocky grin.

"I have this one under control." Annie restated to herself, swelling with confidence from his show of faith in her.

"Well that is good to know.. Really instilling me with faith here" Her patient mumbled delirious and sarcastic, as the back doors closed and Jeff climbed in to drive.

* * *

The drive was uneventful, with Annie placing a catheter into her patient's veins and starting an infusion of sodium chloride. She continued monitoring the immobilised man and was surprised at how suddenly they arrived at hospital.

Jeff effortlessly nosed the vehicle up to the raised ambulance bay of the small Greendale hospital.

Annie shot him a grateful smile when he opened the double back doors and dragged the dropleg stretcher out on of its raspy housing. The wheeled legs scissored out from under the bed and locked into place one at a time. With the stretcher now standing at almost Annie's shoulder height, she walked behind the yellow and black device, providing a push with her free hand to help Jeff get the patient up the hospital ramp.

She dashed forward to beat him to the closed door, eager to use her brand new electronic swipe card that gained entrance into the emergency department. Jeff's lip twitched at the corner, drawn out by her youthful enthusiasm.

Annie dutifully held the door open so he could pull the patient into the hospital and as she faced back towards him, she noticed for the first time the other ambulance in the bay parked beside theirs.

It was Troy and Abed's vehicle.

"Huh, looks like Troy and Abed are already here with their patient." Annie mumbled to her self, wondering what they had brought in.

Turning her attention back to their own patient, she followed the stretcher as it was wheeled into the resus bay where the doctors and nurses were waiting.

She timidly gave her handover under the scrutiny of the older doctors on duty, while Jeff helped the nurses transfer the patient onto a hospital bed. Annie was annoyed to see that some of the younger nurses were all flashing her male partner wide smiles. It bolstered her irritation to see him return the smiles in a friendly manner, casually discussing how the job went.

Jeff's smile disappeared in an instant when he heard a familiar voice.

"Hi Annie, Jeff; fancy seeing you guys here. Wow, you really did a bang up job fixing this patient." An overly friendly and enthusiastic male chimed.

Jeff felt the temperature rise in his blood at the sight of the annoyingly perfect Dr Rich from pottery class. He nodded politely in acknowledgment, but fumed internally, noticing that the white doctors overcoat Rich wore accentuated the man's already good looks.

_And here I am stuck in a pair of overalls looking like the bloody gardener,_ Jeff cursed jealously.

Annie turned in pleasant surprise at the sound of her friend the doctor, awkwardly she pulled him into a hug and failed to notice the dark look it created on her partner's face.

"Rich! I forgot you might be working here," Annie gushed with a friendly smile.

_Rich; God I hate that guy,_ Jeff grated inside, glaring at the intruder on his time with Annie.

Unable to take much more happy go-lucky from the Anti-Winger, Jeff left the stretcher where it was and moodily wandered off to see where Troy and Abed had gotten off to.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N- **Thanks for all the reviews, enjoy.

**-Grey.**

* * *

The brooding Ex-lawyer found the want-to-be dynamic duo back in the triage area of the emergency department. It was filled with lines of chairs for the self admits and the patients who were low priority to be seen by a doctor.

"..so I found when mine gets stuck you can kind of wiggle it around in the tap to help ease it out." Troy explained to their seated patient, who was only wearing a towel and appeared to have most of a bath spigot attached to the end of his foot.

"What the hell you guys?" Jeff enquired looking from a sympathetic Troy to Abed, who was finishing up the paperwork.

"Mr. Urlich here, got his toe stuck in the tap." Troy detailed, as if it was a normal occurrence during bathing.

"We couldn't get it out, so Troy used his awesome plumbing skills to remove the tap." Abed finished with an alien grin of appreciation to his dexterous partner.

"And he really needed to come to hospital why?" Jeff asked, getting to the heart of the matter.

Troy and Abed shared a guilty glance before Troy hesitantly answered.

"We uh.. might have accidentally broken his toe trying to get it out." He admitted.

Jeff slumped his head in exasperation and turned to go back to the truck.

"Hey Jeff did you see Dr Rich is working tonight?" Abed quickly added.

Jeff whirled back on his two friends.

"Why should I care about that Abed? I hate the guy, he's so sweet and perfect I was sure he should have succumbed to diabetes by now." He growled.

"His kettlecorn does have a lot of sugar in it." Troy contemplated sagely.

Abed was not so easily distracted by thoughts of food.

"You do care Jeff, but only because Annie cares about him." The quiet observer noted enigmatically.

"Enough Abed," Jeff grated testily, "I don't want to deal with this right now. Hurry up and finish here, I'll see you back at station."

"Wow, Jeff really doesn't like Dr Rich does he?" Troy noted, as their moody friend stormed back to the ambulance bay.

"Jeff feels threatened by him in his battle for Annie's attention. Rich is a nice, successful man and at that is more then Jeff can claim at the moment, so naturally he is a bit jealous." Abed candidly broke it down for his less observant friend.

"Makes sense," Troy confirmed, "Guy doesn't like someone better sniffing around Annie in case she realises she can do better then him."

"Precisely Reggie." Abed agreed in his Inspector Spacetime voice.

The pair gave their special handshake, but paused mid-slap as they saw something leaned up against the wall. It had four wheels; a seat and it looked fun. Staring at each other, their eyes widened at the potential enjoyment that could be had with their unexpected find.

* * *

Annie came out of the hospital to find Jeff already waiting in the driver seat of their truck.

"It was crazy seeing Rich there wasn't it Jeff?" She asked brightly, climbing in beside him. Jeff just grunted in reply, as he started up the ambulance and began backing out of the bay.

"He was showing me the X-rays for our patient there, it was so interesting; turns out he had three broken ribs and a fracture to his skull." Annie continued enthusiastically oblivious to her partner's less then enthusiastic attitude on the subject.

"But don't worry, Rich says that the guy will probably be alright though." She briskly finished her story, looking at her tall friend for a response.

"Oh well if Rich said it then I'm sure it will come true." Jeff replied snidely, cringing a little internally at how jaded his comment had sounded.

"Well he is a doctor, Jeff," Annie retorted, defensively.

"Yeah, a fact he never fails to remind everyone of." Jeff snapped back, blaring the airhorn and taking his bitterness out on the driver who just cut him off.

"Why do you.." Annie started accosting him fiercely, before he cut her off. Jeff really didn't want to answer whatever her question was.

"Just drop it Annie, I don't like the guy okay?" He ended the argument sharply, risking a serious glance at the fired up female beside him. The fact that she looked kind of cute when she was angry helped kill his foul mood.

Thankfully the radio crackled into life at that instant and the pair were had never been so thankful to hear Pierce's voice.

"uh Greendale One are you guys free? Cause Shirley and Britta need urgent backup." The grizzled voice announced shakily, amid the static.

"Yeah this is One, we're on it, send through the location Pierce." Jeff curtly replied, pulling the ambulance over and tugging the cheap GPS out of its housing on the dash.

Annie read him the address off her pager in a neutral tone and he punched it into the navigation unit. In true Greendale fashion, only the cheapest devices had been purchased, the most glaring obvious difference between their one and one made by a proper manufacturer was that their's was only able to give verbal instructions in Russian. Luckily visual prompts were still provided in the form of little arrows and approximate distances to waypoints.

With a vague idea which direction they were heading, Jeff flicked on the flashing lights and silently pulled off in that direction.

* * *

There was no conversation in Greendale One, while it drove to back up the other truck and they quickly found the address.

Jeff parked in front of the other ambulance, leaving enough room to open the back of his truck if necessary. They had arrived on Greendale's central street, the main drag just outside the pubs and clubs. Since it was a Friday night it was flowing unsteadily with drunk people, therefore Jeff was a bit distressed that Annie boldly marched straight into the middle of the crowd towards the other crew without even waiting for him.

_She's mad at me again,_ he figured wearily. Sometimes things were so up and down with Annie that it did his head in, but none of it seemed to matter when there was the potential of danger to her.

His long legs let him catch to where she entered the fray in a few strides, but in that time she had already made it into the mob. He put on a burst of extra speed, shoving aside drunk spectators and pushing his way through the intoxicated crowd.

"Jeff!"

"Jeff!"

"Jeffery!"

He couldn't even see them yet, but three distinctly different feminine voices yelled uncertainly for him and he hastened his movement. He finally made it to the owner's and saw what they were yelling about.

A half naked, white male lay facedown in the middle of the road, his shirt was nowhere in sight, revealing a scrawny, pasty back and shoulders. His shock of untidy, black hair masked most of his face, but gently wisped on one side with his slow breaths.

_He is breathing at least, that is always a good start, _Jeff observed.

"What's up," Jeff asked casually of the others, watching Annie pull on a set of grey nitrile gloves. The only size Greendale provided them with was either extra large or extra small, because they were cheaper. The small were even tight for Annie and not even Pierce's giant mitts fitted the larger size. She grumpily tugged on the edge of the gloves, trying to get them further down her hand. Her frustrated efforts only served to rip the protective gear and Annie finally gave up in disgust.

Jeff wore an amused expression throughout the whole performance, while Shirley explained what they had found.

"Unconscious white guy, no obvious injuries found, smells like booze and won't wake up." She described in obvious disapproval of the blackout drunk man.

Jeff nodded in acknowledgement and reluctantly stepped closer. The reek of alcohol and vomit was almost overpowering as it wafted off the man. In one hand the comatose man clutched a litre bottle of spirits, like it was his lifeline.

"He looks familiar," Annie hesitantly stated, crouching beside him and getting a grip on one shoulder.

"He smells like Robert Downey Jr." Britta added, cringing and reluctantly placing her hands either side of his head to stabilise it during the log roll.

"It's Harry Potter!" Shirley exclaimed, as they rolled him over to reveal a pair of broken round glasses and crooked yellowing teeth. It did kind of look like an older, dirtier certain famous wizard.

"No, It's Duncan." Jeff corrected her, hiding his surprise and looking down at the Greendale Psychologist, who was pissed as a newt.

* * *

"Check his pockets Annie, since you've already got gloves on." Jeff suggested with his best smartarse grin, her glare was withering and unimpressed, but she complied.

Britta lifted the patient's eyelids gently to check his pupils, while Annie went through his pockets to confirm that it was in fact their old Anthropology professor. The gloves weren't a bad idea, as the smell of ammonia became more distinct when she unsettled his trousers.

With a wrinkled nose at the smell of pee, she passed the cheap leather bundle up to Jeff, who folded it open and started going through it.

Shirley and Britta continued their assessment of the unconscious man, who was now giving the occasional groan when Annie pinched his shoulder painfully.

"I thought he had gotten dry," Shirley remarked sadly, flexing his ribs in and out.

"Ha it's Duncan, how long did you think that would last?" Britta responded coarsely, remembering their old lecturer turning up to class most days completely sloshed.

The prone man mumbled something incomprehensible at the mention of his name. _In fact it was pretty hard to tell when he was sober, because that was more rare, _Britta considered, thinking back to some rather interesting therapy sessions with him.

"Ain't that the truth," Shirley admitted gravely, waving her hand in front of her nose, "Damn, we could almost get trollied just off his fumes."

"Guy's!" Annie cried in offence, "He can still hear you, you know. And what, do you two think that some people can't change?"

"Sorry Annie," Shirley sighed not looking very apologetic at the drunk in front of her.

"You are right though, some people do find Jesus and are able to change for the better." She agreed sweetly.

Britta rolled her eyes at this overly zealous view.

"Heathens never change at all Shirley, it's true." She sarcastically confessed.

Jeff was still pointedly staying out of the argument and rifling through the wallet instead. It was actually quite fascinating getting to poke through it and see all Duncan's old licence photos and discover what cards he carried with him. Around them, the gathered crowd began to thin out and leave when they saw nothing exciting was happening.

"Well some people never change," Shirley declared heatedly, still using Annie as the middleman for the argument. Surprisingly, Britta nodded slightly in grudging support of the comment.

Annie had to jump in at that declaration.

"You can't seriously believe that guys?" She demanded innocently, "Everyone has the opportunity to change." Her gaze almost hopefully drifted towards the tall male officer in their group.

Jeff decided to pipe up right then and do absolutely nothing to support her case.

"The light bulb has to want to change Eddison." He casually proclaimed, adding a completely different angle to the discussion.

"It is definitely Duncan." He confirmed like he was giving evidence in court.

With the wallet still open he sneakily pocketed what was left of the drunk's cash.

"And it looks like he was probably robbed too." Jeff slyly added, tossing the emptier wallet back to the girls.

"What should we do first?" Annie asked, eyeing Jeff suspiciously as his hands returned from his pockets.

"Huh? Try wake him up would be a good start." Winger suggested, blustering a bit to cover up his collection of a callout fee from his old friend.

* * *

Britta gently shook the sleeping man and called his name, but was impatiently pushed aside by Jeff when it didn't work.

"Oi Duncan! Wake up you stinking, pommy drunk!" He growled, slapping the man sharply in the face to no effect and moving on to perform a sternum rub.

Ian Duncan had received a few sternum rubs by paramedics in the past to help get him off the pavement, but none had been done quite as viciously as this one. Jeff took no small pleasure from grating a closed hand up and down the sleeping man's sternum. Duncan's arms flew up to fight the attacking fist, as his chest felt like it was catching fire from the violent friction of knuckles.

His efforts ceased as soon as Jeff did, but his eyes remained wearily open.

"Stop it Winger, you Muppet.." He slurred weakly in acknowledgement of his awakener.

Jeff recoiled from his breath and finally stood back up, sighing. He felt a little dizzy just from the vapour on Duncan's breath.

"He's well enough to spout terrible British insults, he can't be that bad off," Jeff noted in amusement.

"We'll just drop him home," He finally decided, gripping the man under an arm and lifting him to a sitting.

Annie bit her lip in frustration at his words, but she held her tongue while she helped him frogmarch the pissed professor to their ambulance. The crowd had long ago dispersed, disappointed to find that the comatose man was not in fact dead.

Shirley and Britta headed to their truck, the latter thanking her friend's for backing them up.

Jeff headed into the ambulance first and dropped the unsteady drunk roughly on the stretcher. He pried the bottle from the alcoholic's hand and held it up to the light to inspect the label. It was unfamiliar; some kind of scotch, so he popped the top off and cautiously took a whiff. Not offended by the smell, he shrugged in astonishment at Duncan's surprisingly good taste, replaced the top and tossed the half empty vessel onto his personal gear bag in the front.

He turned back around to find a defiant looking Annie blocking the backdoor.

"We can't just take him home," She declared, speaking her mind on the transport issue.

"He doesn't need to go to hospital Annie and we can't leave him here." Jeff pointed out; sticking to his decision and quite glad that she hadn't hit him up about his pilfering.

"It is against our procedures," She nervously counter argued, reluctant to break the rules, even for Jeff.

"Maybe so, but maybe sometimes you need to go outside of them to do the right thing and get the job done." Jeff delivered in a very convincing Winger fashion. If there was ever one man who could make her break the rules, it was him.

"Okay," Annie caved in, seeing an argument that she couldn't win.

"But you are in the back with him then." She dictated as her terms of acceptance, shutting the back doors on him.

* * *

Annie had a lot of time to think about what Jeff had said on the drive to Duncan's flat. Luckily his doorman was still awake and happy to take the drunken man upstairs, a task that he had obviously undertaken in the past.

Annie was holding the swaying man up at the entrance while Jeff ducked back to the truck to get something. To her surprise, he returned to throw a hospital blanket at the intoxicated, shirtless individual, she caught it before it fell and wrapped the professor in it.

"And here is something for your trouble," Jeff muttered, shoving a handful of ill gotten cash in the doorman's hand, before leaving Duncan in his care.

"I lovve you guys." Ian slurred tearfully to the departing pair and let himself be led inside.

"That was the right thing we did there." Annie reluctantly agreed, watching them go and looking up at Jeff.

"It was a genuinely nice thing you did." She announced happily, the warmth of pride burning deep in her again as they walked back to the ambulance together. Sometimes he exceeded her expectations.

"Nah, it was just to prevent us copping an earful at the hospital or having to pick him up again in an hour." Jeff insisted indifferently, refusing to meet her gaze.

Annie watched his reaction with a wily thoughtful expression, her lips pursed in consideration.

"I don't think that was it," she speculated astutely, "I think you actually wanted to be the good guy and do something decent without being hounded for once."

"pffff well that's not it!" He dismissed derisively, almost a little too quickly.

"I'm just doing my job."

"Are you Jeff?" Annie called him on his last statement. "Because it seemed like you were going beyond the call of duty here dropping Duncan home."

Jeff looked troubled by her dogged persistence and he held his peace once he climbed up into the passenger seat.

_Why is Jeff so bothered to be seen doing something nice? _Annie puzzled, starting the ambulance and heading back to station.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N-** Thanks for reading and reviewing. Thought I'd clarify a couple of things because I've had a few questions.

The phonetic alphabet for those who are unfamiliar is a way of communicating individual letters across a radio transmission so they can be easily understood. Each letter corresponds with a registered word of the same letter and helps prevent confusion between letters that sound similar ie 'Mike' and 'November' instead of 'M' and 'N'.

In ambulance dispatching in most countries a letter/number code is used rather then stating what the chief complaint is. This stops civilians, weirdos, the media and such, who may be listening in on emergency channels, from knowing what callouts are occurring and turning up themselves to rubberneck.

**-Grey.**

* * *

It was almost midnight by the time Greendale One arrived back at station and the only thing on Jeff's mind was catching some 'Z's. Almost nodding off the whole way back from the job, he was damn glad that he wasn't driving and that Annie seemed a lot more awake then him.

"I'll restock," She offered kindly when they stopped, seeing his frequent yawning.

"Thanks," He mumbled gratefully, trying to ignore what a roller coaster of a night it had been with her so far. The other two trucks were already parked up, meaning that all three crews were now on station.

While she replaced all the items they had used earlier in the evening, he dully wandered into the kitchen and checked the fridge to see what was left of the pizza. Someone considerate (Shirley) had saved a couple of slices for him and Annie, which he gratefully helped himself to. The station was quiet and he saw that two of the three bedroom doors were already closed.

_The others are probably already asleep, _the ex-lawyer realised, returning to the couch with his food and deciding to leave the TV off for his sleeping friends.

The cold pizza tasted terrible, like stale cardboard and Jeff grimly wondered where the box it had arrived in had gotten to, undoubtedly it would be more appetising.

Ditching the pizza to scope out his bed instead, he came across the next problem with the station. Two single beds in each of the three rooms for three males and three females. While it wasn't exactly sharing a bed with Annie it wouldn't be far off, he realised, looking at the small rooms and the two beds that lay mere feet apart.

Some part of him was troubled by the idea of sleeping in such close proximity to the girl who raised so much in him. A separate part was tickled with secret excitement by the prospect and was already dreaming up fanciful scenarios.

Jeff noticed for the first time a small yellow post-it note stuck on the small patch of wall between the two beds. He walked past the beds, which had again been prepared by someone thoughtful (Shirley) and ripped down the message.

God is watching.

It read, as if the cursive handwriting had left him with any doubt, as to who had written the note.

"Thanks Mother Hen," He muttered darkly under his breath, crinkling the note in his fist and turning to find Annie standing in the doorway.

His first impression was that she was just as thrown by the sleeping arrangements as he was. Something else seemed to briefly cross her face too though and Jeff felt obliged to speak up.

"I can sleep on the couch, if it is a problem?" Jeff offered hopefully, giving her a chance to change things.

Annie hesitated at the offer, the sensible side of her nodding frantically and encouraging her to take up the offer. A rebellious part of her had grown over her time at college though and rebuked the thought, pushing her to just go with things.

_You never know.._ It seemed to whisper seductively.

Annie awkwardly took the somewhat middle ground.

"No, it's okay," She blurted, shrugging her shoulders slightly and inclining her head like she always did when she was uncomfortable.

"We are ….cool…. right? It's uh, no … problem," She insisted brokenly in a slightly higher tone, which put Jeff on edge. All of the above were classic nervous Annie signs and he knew he had to tread extremely carefully to stop her from freaking out.

"Yeah," he assured her in a soft voice and keeping his hands down, like one would do to calm a frightened animal

Annie seemed to think it required further rationalisation.

"Besides, you are station manager you need to be well rested when you have the chance." She reminded him, sitting on her bed and unzipping the zipper that ran up the side of her issued boots.

Jeff nodded satisfied and concluded he would be unable to sleep with the pager, his scissors and drug pouch digging into his hip so he started taking off his belt, which all the items were looped onto.

Annie quickly hid her blush at him taking off his belt, mentally hung up on what that usually entailed removing, before seeing the logic in his move and doing the same thing.

Jeff pulled off his boots and climbed into the bed that had been made for him, he was pleased to note that Shirley or whoever had made his bed had included his pillow when making it. Relaxing into the familiar piece of bedding, he closed his eyes and tried to push his thoughts from the sounds of the girl climbing into the bed opposite him.

The gap was so small that he could have reached out a hand to touch her..

_Whoa better watch where those thoughts are going Winger, _he cautioned himself, rolling onto his back so he wasn't facing her.

Trying as he could to ignore her, she must have been using an especially strong smelling shampoo or soap because her flowery, fragrant scent seemed to fill the room. It was highly distracting and he finally surrendered to the peaceful smell, allowing it to lull him to sleep.

* * *

He felt like sleep had only just taken him when the tones went off, startling him from his pillow. He reluctantly sat up and reached for his gear, while he waited for the designation of a vehicle for the job.

"Batmobile one, respond priority one to a 13 Foxrot one, at 97a Scaleen Road." Pierce announced in a dreary voice, clearly he was getting no rest either. That fact made Jeff feel a little bit better, even if the old washout was encouraging Troy and Abed's antics by using their self designated callsign.

Jeff sighed in relief and threw his belt back down, swinging his legs back into bed. Outside their door, the faint sounds could be heard of Troy and Abed responding to the callout.

Opposite him, Annie took off the one boot she had got on and slipped back into her bed.

"Uhh it is **Foxtrot** not Foxrot Pierce," She groaned in frustration, correcting his poor dispatching codes.

Pierce sucked at the phonetic alphabet.

"Foxrot sounds like some terrible STD you catch from woodland creatures," Jeff whispered smarmily in response.

Annie giggled at the stupidity of his comment,

"Ewww Jeff, Gross."

Jeff found himself grinning at her reaction despite himself, he was now lying in his bed facing her in the lowlight. If he closed his eyes a little, he could almost imagine it was one bed that they lay in together. He felt that strange impulse to reach out to the smiling girl again, but he fought it off with vengeance.

He had to be content with just lying there gazing at her in the darkness while she reciprocated.

"Jeff.." She started only to be cut off by the blaring of the tones again.

_Ahhhh please let it be Shirley and Britta, _Jeff silently begged the god that was supposably watching. He felt like whatever Annie was about to say, it was important.

God may have cared about that too, but Pierce sure didn't.

"Stop dreaming about men and wake up, Jeff." The elderly man crudely ordered, "You are going priority one to a 48 Indian, at 69 Shag Terrace."

"Wow that was actually pretty close to the correct phonetic word." Annie mumbled in amazement, shoving on her boots and threading her belt around her waist.

"I'm sure that was just coincidence," Jeff assured her.

"Thanks Pierce; Troy and Abed get to be Batman and Robin, while all I get from him is gay jokes." He noted snidely doing up his belt buckle.

"Well Abed is Batman, even Bale admitted it." Annie reminded him antagonistically, but with a sweet smile.

"Whatever," Jeff dismissed, more then a little jealous.

"And there is no way that address he has given us is real.."

* * *

"Wow okay Shag Terrace, here we are," Jeff admitted five minutes later in total and utter disbelief. Turned out it was a real address after all.

"I guess we are looking for number 69," Annie slowly agreed in similar astonishment, turning on the sidelights of the ambulance.

"65… 67… 69, here we are." Jeff counted off the letterboxes and backing up the correct driveway.

They grabbed the pack and walked up to the poorly lit front door.

"Ambulance," Annie called uncertainly, before entering with Jeff hot on her tail.

"Over here dear," A weak voice croaked from nearby.

Annie looked around for the source of the voice in the dark hallway. Carefully brushing past her shoulder, Jeff did the smart thing and turned on the light.

It was only then that the pair was able to see the dark form sprawled on the floor of the hall.

Annie rushed over to crouch by the person who turned out to be a misshapen old woman. Her wrinkled face rested on the smooth tile floor, the short bob of grey hair sitting lank on her neck. She was clad in a large, well-used blue nightgown and a single slipper.

"Oh my," Annie exclaimed, "What has happened here this morning? Why are we on the floor?" She asked the old woman, taking a gentle hold on one of her thin wrists.

"I was going to the toilet dear and I slipped on the rug." She explained, reassured by even the smallest of human contact.

"Ohh," Annie acknowledged, relieved it wasn't for a more serious reason. "And what's your name Ma'am? I'm Annie and this is Jeff." She introduced waving a hand up to her sleepy partner, who was leaned casually against the wall.

"Hi there," Jeff greeted lightly.

"I'm Agnes, a pleasure to meet you," The little old lady revealed, before following Annie's wave.

"Oh he's a handsome one." She cried with a crooked, friendly smile.

Jeff looked a bit taken back by the unlikely source of compliment, but he managed to turn it around into a gracious smile instead.

"Don't remind him." Annie jokingly told off Agnes, before starting into her further questioning.

Having ascertained that the old lady wasn't injured from her fall, the two Ambos helped stand her back up. Annie even went back and found her other slipper.

"Do you still need to use the bathroom?" Jeff surprisingly asked her once she was seated in her armchair of preference. Annie looked up from the paperwork at his question.

"Well yes, I do rather," Agnes admitted sheepishly.

"You are still a little shaky on your feet there, why don't I give you a hand getting there?" He coolly offered, holding out a hand.

Annie suppressed her Awww knowing it may be hurtful to the situation at hand. Jeff helped the old woman out of her seat and across to the bathroom with an arm linked in hers for support. He returned five minutes later with the chatty old bird on his arm, nattering away about her grandkids and Jeff taking it all in, surprisingly tolerant.

"She doesn't need to go to hospital right?" Annie confirmed with her partner.

The taller man met her gaze, "Is she injured or sick?" He asked, as if that answered the question for her.

Annie nodded demurely, feeling silly now for asking and led the way to the door, Jeff followed slowly.

"Thank you dears." The old woman called as they bid her farewell.

"Maybe consider moving the rug from the hallway, so you don't slip on it again." Jeff recommended as a parting comment, his impatience finally showing through.

The pair walked back to the truck slowly and Jeff noticed that Annie was wearing the same do-gooder smile from earlier in the night. It meant only one thing; he was about to cop some emotional or sympathetic flack from the girl.

"So the good old Winger charm works on the seniors as well." She noted with a teasing smile.

"It's a burden, I can't turn it off." He agreed looking downright haunted by memories of the inappropriate flirting it sometimes earned him from woman of all ages.

"You were good in there," She complemented shyly, "I always have a hard time with talking to oldies."

"That is not true Annie; you talk to Pierce almost every day, he's about as close to the grave as they come." He reminded her with the confident Winger smile.

Annie nudged him playfully with her elbow at the insult to their old friend.

"Yeah but she was different, she was nice." Annie differentiated, playing along with his jokes at the absent Pierce's expense.

"Yeah she was," Jeff actually admitted, "But if you tell the others about this I'll be digging a very small grave out behind the station."

In warning her, he had essentially just cemented her course of action; by the next morning all their friends, if not all of Greendale would know.

"Is the hole to bury your pride and cool reputation in?" She shot back sassily, electing to drive back by climbing in the driver's side.

_Actually he would probably need a bigger hole for that, _She decided, but didn't mention it.

Jeff for once had no answer; especially not to the pert smile she triumphantly wore.

_That girl will be the end of me.. _He thought despairingly while they returned to station.

* * *

The crew of Greendale One actually got a pretty decent sleep that night; the pair was assigned no additional jobs and spent the rest of the early hours in bed. The whole station was awake by 0630 though, to get ready for shift handover at 0700.

Shirley bustled around giving the station a general tidy up and Britta packed up the last of her knitting, another one of her cats had needed a sweater. Troy and Abed were busy dismantling the small blanket fort they had turned their room into; they had struggled to sleep without the comfort of linen ceiling and walls.

Annie and Jeff were in the bay, the former sweeping out the truck, the latter leaning on it and playing on his phone. He had already packed up all his gear from the night and put it in his car. Basically as soon as the day crew turned up, he was ready to disappear home and go to bed.

He was watching the clock, like a kid kept in after class and it wasn't until 0645 that the day crew arrived.

"Pop Pop!" Magnitude announced himself, pushing the ceiling as he approached Jeff.

"Pop Pop!" He and Annie returned the catchphrase as enthusiastically as they could in their present, sleep deprived state; both were pretty pleased that the relief crew had arrived.

Following him was an edgy, familiar looking man with dirty blonde hair and star-shaped sideburns.

"Star-Burns?" Jeff accosted the suspicious character, noting the resemblance between him and the supposed to be dead classmate.

"My name is Ale… Alec." Star-Burns or Alex started in desperation, before quickly correcting himself and settling on his new pseudonym.

"Whatever Star-Blonde," Jeff disregarded and stamped the poor crack-dealer with a new nickname that he would fail to shake.

"Are you the watch manager for this shift?" He asked, holding out his pager and drug pouch to the reincarnated Star-Burns.

"Uhh sure," Star-Blonde answered quickly, eyeing the pouch full of opiates hungrily.

Jeff shrugged, past the point of caring and handed over the articles to his opposite number.

"This is the good stuff.." The man mumbled to himself, as Jeff walked past him towards the exit. Annie wasn't far behind after giving her pager to Magnitude, with a final 'Pop Pop' for good luck.

"Probably merits a follow up," Jeff muttered dispassionately, thinking of the druggie's reaction and giving Neil and Vickie checking Greendale Two, a half-hearted wave.

"Jeff wait," Annie called to him, catching up as he came up in line with Greendale Three.

"What is it Annie? I'd really like to get out of here." Jeff asked exhaustedly.

Leonard poked his head out from the back the back of the ambulance to add his two cents worth.

""What's wrong Winger? Late for breakfast with a 90 year old?" He quipped in his dusky voice.

All tiredness seemed to vanish, as Jeff snapped back at his old adversary.

"Shut up Leonard, your Slipknot cover band is terrible and will never make it." He scathingly clipped back, digging into his pile of personal insults that he reserved for his geriatric nemesis.

"At least **it **appeals to the younger audience," The tenacious old man riposted mockingly, scoring a hit of his own. The only hit his band would end up having, as it turned out.

Jeff brushed past Annie, feeling betrayed by the fact that his enemy had found some dirt on him because of her.

"But Jeff, I.." She cried,

"Annie, I'm tired." Jeff begged her before heading for his car.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure it can wait until our nightshift tonight_,_"He reassured himself.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N- **Thanks for the reviews, I apologise for the delay, I've been a mite busy. Enjoy. Maybe.

**-Grey.**

* * *

Jeff had a restless sleep, daylight penetrated the curtains of his bedroom and he eventually draped a T-shirt over his face to block out the light. He tried not to dwell on the night; it was in fact now just a haze to his sleep-deprived mind. Short clips and flashbacks remained, but his fatigued brain pretty much disregarded the rest of it. The remains he was left with made for an unsettling picture.

A memory of a difficult on and off night with Annie, complicated by the reappearance of Rich, was his basic summary. The whole affair was further convoluted by his thoughts and adaptation to the new job they were performing.

Despite the complexity of both the job and the interpersonal relationship involved, Jeff was almost looking forward to his shift that evening. Especially in light of recent altercations with parts of his old life.

His half dazed thoughts were scattered to the wind by a firm knock on his door.

Jeff groaned and looked at the clock on his bedside cabinet, it read 1237, he had got approximately 5 hours of sleep after coming home.

The knock was louder and insistent, Jeff threw the pillow from his bed in frustration before finally pulling the sheet off himself. Climbing from his expensive bedding, the man quickly nabbed a pair of tracksuit pants from his drawers, since answering the door in just your boxers is considered bad form.

Grumbling the whole way, the shirtless Jeff strode to the door and without even wondering who might be on the other side he yanked it open.

While he wouldn't openly admit it, he had a pretty clear idea who he wanted to be knocking on his door and it was probably the reason he didn't get fully dressed.

His actual guest was nowhere near as lovely or sweet as the one he had expected.

"Pierce?" He exclaimed in surprise, seeing the older gentleman standing on his doorstep with a small bag in his hand.

"Oh sorry Jeff, if you are in the middle of a man-love session I can come back later." Pierce apologised, noticing his friend's state of dress and starting to back away.

"You woke me up Pierce, what do you want?" The ex-lawyer explained and demanded bluntly, at the same time. Explamanded, if you will ;)

"I just wanted to see how your first shift went and ask how the station is running." The moist towelette mogul responded, leaning to peer into his apartment, as if to make sure that Jeff truly didn't have any company.

"Whatever, come in." Jeff surrendered, swinging the door open and retiring to his room for a shirt.

"Thank you," His friend replied, wandering in and placing his bag down.

"Drink?" He offered Jeff, reaching for two tumblers off one of the shelves in the kitchen.

"Sure, why not." Jeff called back absently from his bedroom.

* * *

Jeff returned a minute later to find his older friend standing at the kitchen counter with two short glasses that had a couple of fingers worth of liquid in each.

He accepted the glass on offer and lifted to assess the alcoholic substance with a careful eye. The murky brown liquid looked like true jungle juice and was probably a disgrace to the sophisticated glass it was served in. The smell alone made Jeff's eyes water and his head spin, drinking was probably not the best thing to do on a hangover from night shift.

"What is it?" He wisely asked, before cautiously lifting the glass to his lips and giving it the slightest tilt.

"It is some of my father's famous homebrew that I was left in his will." Pierce explained with an air of smugness, holding up the aged bottle for his inspection. The drawing on the label clearly depicted a group of old fashioned looking, white hunters slaughtering the crude brown skinned natives of some poor country. The label appropriately read; Hawthorne Pure.

_Why am I not surprised,_ Jeff thought bitterly before taking a sip, _man, I hope I don't catch racism from this drink._

He almost did a spit-take though, when the horrible concoction touched his tongue, he somehow maintained his manly dignity and reluctantly swallowed the small mouthful. It tasted like cheap cologne that had been left with burnt toast soaking in it for a decade, before being strained through a pair of old socks and served at room temperature.

Jeff fought the urge to vomit and hastily put the glass down on the counter.

"Pretty strong right?" Pierce bragged, choking him with the foul fumes on his breath.

"Yeah it is really… something." Jeff managed to gasp, feeling dizzy and slyly clutching the bench for support.

Pierce clapped him on the shoulder proudly, having misinterpreted his response completely.

"So I heard they made you Station Chief Jeff, I'm glad the Dean was able to scramble someone last minute to replace me." Pierce revealed keenly, clutching his still oversized arm that was his reason for not working on the road.

His slightly overweight physique seemed to indicate that as of yet, no super spider powers had manifested themselves. Troy and Abed were sure to be disappointed.

_It's probably for the best,_ Jeff figured, taking Pierce for the exact person to abuse those powers.

"Well noone else was putting their unbitten hand up for the job." Jeff shrugged indifferently.

"And your first shift was pretty good? Hard not to be with my dispatching I guess, Garret made a few mistakes of course, but luckily I was there to catch him." The older man supposed arrogantly.

Jeff failed to be alarmed by Pierce's unwitting attitude.

"Well Abed apparently understood it, but Annie seemed to think your phonetic alphabet could use a bit of work." He cleverly replied, avoiding giving his own opinion directly while still delivering a subtle insult.

Pierce rolled his eyes at that comment, "Ha, what does Annie know about it? I helped invent that alphabet back in the old days." He outlandishly insisted.

"You probably did." Jeff allowed him, taking another sly crack at the age of the man.

Pierce took another generous slug from his glass of hooch in satisfaction.

Jeff picked up his own tumbler and pretended to match the other man's action, although he was careful not to accidentally ingest any of the disgusting homebrew.

The fumes were already enough to get him mildly drunk.

"Shouldn't we be drinking this out of old jars?" He asked sarcastically, referring to the moonshine qualities of the Hawthorne secret recipe.

"Huh?" Pierce squinted at him questioningly, having totally missed the dig at his parent's attempt at biofuel. Either that or the drink was literally making him go blind.

"Nothing," Jeff quickly corrected,

"Look Pierce, I've got shift in a few hours and I really can't see the others being very happy if I attended it half drunk." He levelled with the old man, coming up with a decent excuse not to further indulge in the ethanol.

_It's probably even true, _he marvelled at his excuse; _Annie would really be on my case if I_ _turned up smelling like this drain cleaner. _Once more, he thought it was funny how his mind instantly jumped to considering how his actions would affect that girl in particular. He partly attributed that to the fact that he was more then a little tipsy from Pierce's devil drink already, the other part he didn't care to dwell on.

_Deny and omit evidence Winger_, the dying, shifty lawyer part of him agreed.

* * *

"Suit yourself Jeff, you are terrible company to drink with anyway." Pierce dismissed, looking mildly offended by being blown off.

He seemed to get over it pretty quickly when he remembered his bag.

"Actually I have something here for you that might come in handy, Station Chief." Pierce exclaimed, giving his young friend an approving smile before digging through his bag.

"It's not some hat or headdress of some kind is it Pierce? Because I thought we went over that." Jeff sighed, reminding him of their conversation about the purpose of a Station 'Chief' and beginning to tire of the geriatric.

Pierce fumbled in embarrassment and hastily stuffed the feathered, Native American headband deeper into the bag.

"Ah that is for a costume party later…" He lied in a nervous mumble, when Jeff raised an eyebrow at the item before it disappeared.

Marinating in his complete and utter lack of surprise, Jeff waited to see what lame item the man managed to fish out of his substandard bag of tricks.

He withdrew a small black pouch.

"This is a multitool Jeff, kind of a combination, knife, pliers, screwdriver sort of thing. Pretty general purpose, very useful for a medic." Pierce explained, handing the pouch over to him.

Jeff was actually genuinely impressed by the gift and he ripped open the Velcro sheath to take out the tool. It was made of a dull silver metal and fitted in his large hands well; a crease ran down the middle dividing the item into two distinct segments. Playing with it he found that by pulling the two halves apart it exposed the hinges and that the two lengths could then fold around to the top, to form the handles of the pliers. He clipped the snub-nosed instrument a few times before folding it back up and flicking out the sharp, knife blade.

Jeff eyed the instrument almost admiringly, until Pierce had to go and ruin it.

"This one is the prototype one of the subsidiaries of the Hawthorne company are working on." Pierce claimed, pointing to the wonky 'H' crest stamped onto the metal.

Given who it was created by, Jeff quickly replaced the item in its sheath before it broke or cut him. The quite cool item had suddenly lost a lot of its appeal and reliability.

"Thanks Pierce," He said anyway, despite the deflation caused by its manufacturer.

The wealthy man smiled amiably at this response and generously imparted another gift.

Sadly It wasn't the Indian headdress.

"You're welcome Jeff, use it well." He replied, heading for the door.

"Go ahead and keep that bottle of Hawthorne Pure." Pierce added as he drained his tumbler with a swig and passed it back to Jeff. The bottle of typically racist Hawthorne whiskey was still on the bench where he had left it.

"Are you sure?" The confounded man holding the door open checked, hoping that he might change his mind.

"Of course," Pierce waved off his concerns, "I have a whole cellar full of bottles left for next time." He reassured Jeff with a wink as he shut the door after him.

Jeff's face twisted in mortification at the prospect of there being both a next time and more of the terrible spirits he had just been gifted. Shuddering at the thought, he quickly poured the rest of his glass down the sink, pitying his pipes and put the bottle away on the highest shelf he could find in the kitchen.

_I'll keep it to clean grease off the engine of the Lexus, _he decided leniently, never envisioning the day he would ever sink low enough to actually drink it again without Pierce's coercion.

With his mind on alcohol, he suddenly remembered the bottle of booze he had nicked off Duncan last night. He took the forty ounce bottle from his bag and after a moment of deliberation, replaced it with the multitool from Pierce.

"You never know," He mumbled to himself, before grabbing a fluffy towel from the hot water cupboard for a shower.

* * *

Jeff arrived five minutes early for his second night shift and parked his Lexus nice and close to the makeshift station.

Entering the building, the first thing he saw was Leonard slumped on the couch with his eyes closed.

"Damn he's still alive." Jeff noted in disappointment, having spotted the man's even rise and fall of breathing.

"Just to spite you Winger." Leonard croaked, with an enthusiasm belying his old appearance.

Jeff was interrupted from what was sure to be another witty reply, by the arrival of Magnitude and his Starburned partner.

"Pop pop," He greeted Jeff less then enthusiastically; apparently a hard days work could wear out even the hyperactive teen.

Jeff returned the catchphrase and accepted a pager and drug pouch from the 'reincarnated' Starburns. Suspiciously, he weighed the pouch in his hand and reluctantly attached the small holder onto his belt. Starburns avoided his gaze the whole time and weaselled away as soon as he had handed over his items.

Jeff noticed that Magnitude had already unloaded his burden and was following the delinquent towards the exit. That could only mean that Annie was already around somewhere and had relieved him earlier.

Hedging his bet on the garage, probably checking the ambulance, Jeff pushed open the door to their makeshift-parking bay. He noticed that all three trucks were in and he heard the most bizarre noise as he passed the open back doors of one of them.

"Troy and Abed on heeelium!" The high-pitched voices sung together.

Jeff followed the sound and found himself looking at the playful pair lounging around in the back of their truck. A half empty tank of helium sat between the two and they both wore the widest, most childish grins. The two friends giggled at an octave higher than Annie or Shirley could manage, when they heard how amusing they sounded.

"Abed and the Chipmunks I take it?" Jeff guessed dryly, with much smirk.

"Sound waves move quicker through Helium Jeff and comically raises our voices high enough to play characters we could never do before." Abed explained the groundbreaking discovery in a reedy voice.

"Yeah? Well knock it off, we need to save some gas for the patients." Jeff grumbled, feeling unusually responsible. He had almost forgot what it felt like not to be responsible for anyone, let alone his wacky group of friends. It was just one of the ways Greendale had changed him.

"Come on Jeff, there is still plenty left for a Squeakquel." Troy implored him lightly, in a tone not to dissimilar to Urkel's

"A Squeakquel? Really Troy?" The man who hadn't been huffing helium, reproached and walked on, shaking his head in disapproval.

Abed climbed up off the stretcher, sending his partner in crime a sad look. "I'm with Jeff on this one sorry Troy. We have officially exceeded our Alvin and the Chipmunks references for this episode."

Troy looked devastated, as Abed climbed out of the back of the truck and followed Jeff. Being immature was only fun when you had someone else to do it with.

* * *

"What adventures are we going to have tonight?" The filmmaker wondered aloud to his hero, as Jeff finally passed the weird zone and arrived at his truck.

"No adventures Abed, just another nights mandatory work." The ex-lawyer corrected, before daring to dream. "Who knows though, we may get a quiet night?"

"Is that Jeff?" A bubbly, melodious voice enquired from the front of the truck.

"Hey Annie," Jeff greeted the girl, as she walked through the truck to meet the pair at the back door of the vehicle.

"Wow, you are on time tonight Jeff," She commented happily after inspecting her watch.

"Of course he did," Abed confirmed, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"As his character develops to the new found role, Jeff slowly becomes more invested in the job, especially with recent developments in his life." Abed explained the standard sitcom formula that was unfolding, he only cut it short at a barbed glare from Jeff.

"Oh," Annie acknowledged politely, as she worked over what Abed had just said.

"Wait, what recent developments in your life Jeff?" She suddenly caught on, realising what Abed had implied.

The man in question turned to walk away but found his path blocked by Shirley and Britta.

"Good evening Jeffery," Shirley sung pleasantly, before catching the tense atmosphere in front of her.

"What's wrong?" She asked, reading Annie's troubled expression and recognising Jeff's attempted escape.

"Jeff was just trying to avoid Annie's emotional confrontation about what has recently changed in his life." Abed commentated, withdrawing an open packet of chocolate coated peanuts from his jumpsuit.

Catching the vibe of revelations and also snacks, Troy came over to join the rest of the group, he carefully avoided Abed's eyes. All was quickly forgiven though, when Abed offered the packet of junk food out to his best friend. With a fresh smile, Troy practically bounced over to share the chocolate with his best bud.

Ignoring the touching, if not dim-witted act of friendship, Jeff sent his best withering stare at the Arab kid who had so bluntly summed things up for his other friends.

"Thank you Abed," He growled, pacing back and forward between the vice of friends, as if looking for a weak point to escape through.

"Welcome," Abed replied happily, through a mouthful of chocolate and nuts. Whether he noticed the anger or sarcasm was unclear, to the observers it would seem he was just excited to see how things played out.

* * *

"What's happened? Has Jeff finally managed to cut his hair and moisturising regime to under forty minutes?" Britta guessed snidely.

"You've abandoned your old life of sin and found the good lord?" Shirley provided hopefully, clutching the cross on her necklace.

"You've decided that you will host our version of Greendale Idol after all!" Troy eagerly concluded, looking to Abed for confirmation.

Annie remained ominously silent, not hoping or hazarding a guess.

Jeff stepped back so he could see all five oddballs at once, before addressing them.

"It's thirty five minutes Britta," He started off, correcting her first, "About the same length of time it takes you to scrub up from the hangover you have every morning from too much cheap vodka and the incessant smell of cat pee in your apartment."

Britta was quickly put in her place by that comment,

"I change the litter box now," She mumbled defiantly, although not disputing the drinking part of his claim.

"Shirley, technically I do follow a book, Agnostic remember?" He reminded the group, to the mumblings of "Lazy man's atheism", "A model Christian" and "The Dane Cook of religions."

"I didn't necessarily say it was a Bible, nor did I claim to follow it closely," Jeff clarified, before things became too heated and turned his attention to the next person.

"Troy, I'm not hosting you and Abed's abomination of a reality TV show." He shot down the excited man-boy, before he got his hopes too high.

"And for the last time Abed, I won't be a judge alongside Axel Rose either." He yelled in finality, as the silent observer opened his mouth to make the suggestion.

"Damn, dead ringer for Seacrest or Cowell." Abed instead whispered to himself sadly.

"Well then what is it Jeff?" Annie asked quietly in genuine concern now over his distracting monologues. She slowly closed the distance between them and tentatively reached out a hand supportively to his shoulder.

Defeated by the soft touch of the lovely woman, Jeff sighed deeply and hung his head. He refused to meet anyone's eyes straight away and instead let his examine every corner of the garage first.

"You can tell us Jeffery." Shirley kindly prompted him.

Annie's grip on his arm tightened as the silence stretched, she was now almost frightened about what his revelation might be.

Looking up at his angular face, she could see the internal struggle that warred just beneath the surface, as he fought with revealing whatever had recently changed.

"Jeff?" She encouraged again, moving in closer so he had no choice, but to meet her soft doe eyes.

Under weight of Annie's innocent Disney eyes and an unintentionally generous view down the front of her jumpsuit, Jeff came clean.

"I…"

* * *

**A/N- **Man, I'm a dick. Making you all wait until next chapter for the big reveal ;) Cliffhanger?


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N- **Been super busy sorry for the long wait people. Thanks for your reviews.

**-Grey.**

* * *

"I can't be lawyer again." Jeff finally admitted in frustrated defeat.

A stunned silence followed this revelation, broken only by Abed.

"Beginning of season plot twist, I like it." He declared to himself approvingly, before noticing everyone else's shocked reactions.

Having opened the floor for more socially acceptable responses, they started pouring in completely unwanted from the other members of the group.

"Oh Jeffery, I'm so sorry," Shirley cried compassionately, knowing how much his profession mattered to the man. She had a sinking feeling that she might have been partly responsible for this change.

"Wait what?" Britta demanded, thrown by his serious piece of news.

"That sucks man, lying and convincing people are kind of your superpowers." Troy concluded, giving his friend an emotional clap on the shoulder to show he felt for his cause. He realised now that Jeff was well and truly locked out of his kingdom.

"Generic sympathetic response." Abed added, with a happy nod to Annie for teaching him empathy.

The girl in question gave the socially awkward man a short, weak smile for his effort before returning to the more serious issue at hand.

"Aww, Jeff," She moaned pityingly, pawing at his arm supportively. Her face was broken and her eyes moist, as she shared the pain of her tall friend's loss.

"Well I can still be lawyer, but it won't be anywhere around here." He darkly clarified for his sympathetic friends. The implication of the 'around here' part was not lost on the girl in front of him.

"What happened Jeff?" Troy asked him.

Jeff sent an irritable look over the group for forcing him to share, before stooping to sit down on the back step of his ambulance.

"Have you guys already forgotten what happened at the end of last semester?" He asked the group, frustrated that he had to explain.

"I became the chosen one of a creepy trade school." Troy remembered with a lingering expression of confusion, the whole thing was still a bit strange to him. Messiah privileges were pretty sweet though.

"Yeah, yeah and I went evil and tried to cut off Jeff's arm," Abed reminded them with a brisk 'move it along' motion with his hand.

"Yeaaah, I've really been meaning to talk to you about that part Abed." Jeff cut him with a look of concern that bordered on fear.

"And Allen threatened Jeffery to throw our court case, so his law firm could keep in Pierce's good books." Shirley commented disapprovingly.

"Have we started recapping every episode now?" Abed asked in mounting frustration. The tired time filler of sitcom fodder had always annoyed him, his photographic memory meant that the recap was essentially unnecessary and quickly became tedious.

"Well then it should be pretty obvious that after our run in at the end of last year, my backstabbing, ex-colleague Allen basically black listed me in every law firm in the state." Jeff explained bitterly, spitting his ex-partner's name like it tasted foul.

"Oh Jeffery, it's all my fault." Shirley sobbed, charging in for a huge motherly hug he was too slow to fend.

Amid the smothering embrace, Jeff managed to gasp out a response to her reaction.

"No Shirley it's his fault and maybe a little Pierce's, the guy is a world class douche."

"And a creep," Annie amended sharply, crossing her arms over her chest in mere memory of the man.

"I'm confused, are we still just talking about Allen?" Troy confirmed.

"Pierce could also qualify for both those categories." Abed agreed, seeing how Troy could be confused about who they were dissing.

"No it's not really Pierce's fault that he felt inclined to fire Allen as his lawyer and this resulted in Allen making trouble for Jeff." Britta clarified, giving Jeff a hard stare to ensure that was the way he interpreted it.

"Yeah he couldn't have known." Jeff reluctantly growled, clearing the older man of blame.

"But you could still go somewhere else and be a lawyer right?" Abed assumed, eyeing his main character with interest.

Annie suddenly had one of her rare moments where she felt genuinely angry at her Autistic flatmate. She had to ball her hands into fists stop herself reaching out for his skinny birdlike throat.

_He just had to mention that leaving is always an option for Jeff, _she raged internally while trying her best to maintain an appropriate facial expression.

Annie had to consciously suppress a freak out at the divided expression that Jeff was wearing, from Abed's reminder. It was obviously something he had thought about and considered.

Channelling the spirit of every Disney cartoon she had ever watched (there were many), Annie fluttered her eyelids softly and gave Jeff her most sweet, pleading expression.

"But.. you don't really want to leave us once you graduate do you Jeff?" Annie asked in her most timid, fragile voice and fixing her soft face on his.

Jeff made the mistake of eye contact and was entranced, sucked into the plethora of innocence and sweetness. Blinking rapidly and shaking his head, he tried to break Annie-spell, but she was really putting on the juice this time, with feminine wiles at full output.

It lasted about thirty seconds and was not the first time the group noticed her trick.

Britta rolled her eyes once more at the exploitation of womankind, while Shirley noticed the play the young girl was going for and started preparing a motherly, guilt inducing speech to support her case.

Troy and Abed watched on in wonder, relieved they weren't on the receiving end and analysing the technique.

"That explains how she always gets me to do the dishes." Troy suddenly understood in a moment of clarity.

"Better then the Jedi mind trick." Abed concluded in admiration, his lower emotional receptivity gave him a greater degree of resistance.

"But watch, Jeff is fighting it." He commentated as Annie tried to elicit the right response from the enraptured male.

It was true, Jeff tried to break eye contact and drop his gaze, but that was even worse, he was just trading Annie-spell for Annie's Boobs-spell and it had nothing to do with a monkey.

A vein pulsed on his overlarge forehead and he somehow managed to push his gaze to the ceiling instead.

"Of course not Annie, but it looks like I can't be a lawyer here, so what am I supposed to do?" He finally answered, managing a partial escape from her manipulative gaze and breaking the expression by turning the question back on her.

Annie could only stammer in response to his misdirection, her mind wanting to say several things to help keep him, but her body refusing to let them come out.

"Anyone?" He curtly put the question to the floor, creating another stunned silence among his friends.

Someone mumbled "Forehead model?"

Returning to his former eloquent self, Jeff continued as his frustration deepened.

"Because if I can't be a Lawyer then what they hell am I doing at Greendale Community College in the first place?" He finished with, storming off for his office and leaving the group to ponder miserably on that point.

* * *

"Woah. This is big, season finale big." Abed decided in excitement, looking around the station at the disenchanted study group.

"This is no TV sitcom Abed," Annie rebuked him stormily, still mad at him for bringing up the concept of leaving to Jeff. Her anger quickly gave way to sadness though at the crisis that faced them.

"No, I agree it is more like badly written fanfiction of a TV sitcom." Abed stated quickly, breaking the fourth wall and further confusing his friends.

"What are we going to do if Jeffery leaves?" Shirley morosely wondered, giving Annie a one armed cuddle to reassure her trembling lip.

"Well if Annie's fluttering Bambi eyes didn't convince him to stay, then we might be out of luck." Britta surmised, looking down despite the verbal put downs she constantly traded with the man. Although she hated to admit, he was the decisive leader of the group and she was never going to be able to fill his slot.

"And on that note, Troy grab one of the Glucometers." Britta added sarcastically. "Mr. Sulking in his office just received an almost lethal dose of Annie's s innocent look, so we had better go and check his blood sugar level."

Troy reached for the kit, but stopped when he caught Shirley's shake of a head that confirmed it was a snide joke.

Annie pouted at the insinuated insult from the jaded blonde.

"Dr Rich should have diabetes." Abed was reminded by the topic.

"Abed! That's not nice." Shirley reproached.

"That's what Jeff said." Abed shrugged unconcerned in defence of his words.

Troy nodded in the affirmative, backing up his buddy's words.

"He was eating some cake when we were in there earlier." Britta mused.

Further musing and thinking was cut off by the tones, as the first job of the night was dropped on the station.

* * *

In his lonely office, Jeff lifted his weary head from his hands.

"Come on please be us," He muttered, waiting for the dispatch, "Anything to get me away from station and the others for a while.." He begged the dispatching gods.

It was not a god, but the disreputable Pierce Hawthorne who heard his prayers and completely disregarded them.

"Evening losers!" He greeted jovially, "Batmobile, priority one to a 22 Lemur at 16 Archer Rd."

"Dammit." Jeff groaned sinking his head to rest once more on the desk.

"I should have known that Abed would blow my big secret in some kind of narrative." He glumly accepted.

Outside in the garage Troy and Abed happily jumped into their truck, the latter won the paper-scissors-rock to drive.

"Pierce is getting closer with the codes." Troy granted their aged dispatcher.

"Yeah, well the mispronounced words gag was sure to wear thin eventually." Abed explained, pulling out of the garage.

"I love this part." Troy answered him, changing the subject as he reached to turn on the siren.

* * *

The two best friends hurtled through the early evening, dividing traffic with their distinct wail, until they reached their first red light.

Abed slammed his foot on the brakes, careening them to a stop, centimetres in front of the controlled intersection.

"Hey buddy, we are in an ambulance; we can run red lights." Troy reminded his driver helpfully.

Abed was frozen in place staring at the set of lights suspended in front of them, the rest of the traffic had ground to a halt at the unexpected move from the emergency vehicle.

"But the light is red, red means stop." Abed defied him obsessively with wide, startled eyes, his foot still firmly on the brake.

"We have our lights and sirens on, so it is okay to go through." Troy assured him, lowering his tone slightly as he usually did when his friend was having a slight crazy moment. Maybe Aspergers and ambulance driving didn't go well together.

Abed simply shook his head resolutely at the reasoning and kept their ambulance firmly planted, its flashing lights illuminating the puzzled drivers of the other stationary vehicles, until the traffic light finally changed to green.

Stomping his foot on the gas, Abed tore off the mark as if his odd episode with the traffic lights hadn't happened.

"You know, Batman wouldn't stop for red lights." Troy commented, coming at the recent problem from a different angle.

"True," Abed conceded, "He would probably drive from roof top to roof top instead, causing massive amounts of property damage in his armoured personnel carrier."

Troy frowned and shrugged, he had to give him that one;

"That guy is pretty reckless." He agreed, realising it was the first time he had ever really considered it.

* * *

As the address drew closer, Troy turned to open one of the lockers and sighed wistfully at the two costumes inside.

_Jeff is a buzzkill for not letting us do jobs dressed as Batman and Spiderman, _He thought miserably, closing the locker again.

"The world isn't ready for it yet." The parking Abed commented, reading his friend's mind as he saw the locker close.

"Not yet." Troy reluctantly agreed, walking through the back of their truck to get the resus bag.

Carrying the kit, Troy took the lead into the house.

"Hello, Ambulance." He announced, opening the door and holding it for his partner.

"Oh thank heaven you are here. I'm in the bedroom!" A familiar shrill voice cried.

Troy and Abed shared a suspicious glance, before following the sound of the voice.

They entered the dingy bedroom and were stopped in their tracks by the sight that presented itself.

Lying on the Dalmatian print bed was a certain Dean wearing tight pink pyjama bottoms and a tight, pale blue tank top. His slight figure was curled up into a ball and he appeared to be wearing a wig of shoulder length strawberry hair.

"Dean why did you call us?" Troy demanded impatiently, keeping his gaze averted from the scary sight.

"I kind of hoped Jeffery would come." The disappointed figure on the bed moaned.

"And I'm not your Dean; I'm his sister, Jean." The huddled Pelton insisted shrilly.

"Riiight." Troy deadpanned disbelievingly, drawing out the word.

"It's true and my tummy hurts." The Dean stated unhappily, clutching his stomach as if to provide evidence.

Abed leaned to whisper in Troy's ear, "His physique, voice and mannerisms are a 97% match for Dean Pelton. He might be faking it, but let's just take him to hospital just in case." He finished in recommendation.

Troy nodded, thankful for the computer analysis and his partner's opinion.

"Alright 'Jean'," He said, playing along with the Dean's fantasy, "Walk out to the truck and lets go to hospital."

"Can't you carry me in your big strong arms Troy?" 'Jean' begged.

"Or you can stay here and see your doctor in the morning.." Troy provided as an alternative, unwilling to handle or be handled by the man and starting to leave.

"Alright, off to hospital we go," The patient quickly decided, springing to their feet and eagerly walking out to the ambulance.

Troy hung his head in shame and discomfort as he followed the weirdo into the back of the vehicle to assess him on the way to hospital.

"So…. Any particular reason why your might have this pain in your abdomen?" He wearily asked, hoping for something simple.

Abed followed up after the pair and was closing the doors to the back when he heard part of the explanation for the mysterious pain.

"Well there was this party last night I don't remember most of it, but one of the… guests.. brought this cucumber…" The huddled patient detailed, choosing his words carefully.

Abed slammed the door to avoid whatever came next in the terrifying story.

_Troy is the one who likes butt stuff, _Abed reminded himself, when he considered whether his flatmate would be alright in the back.

Without another thought on the topic, he climbed back in the front and started off to hospital.

* * *

Britta and Shirley were bumped mere moments after Troy and Abed left. Responding to a job in one of the nearby localities, they discussed the most recent developments on the way.

"What do you think Jeffery is going to do if he can't be a lawyer around here, Britta?" Shirley nervously asked her passenger.

"I dunno," Britta shrugged seemingly uncaringly, "Knowing him, he will probably talk his way into some other great job somewhere he doesn't deserve."

"You think so? You really think he would leave us to pursue his career, even after all we have been through?" The pious woman scrutinised her friend.

"Honestly? I don't know Shirley." Britta sighed deeply, "If you asked me a couple of years ago, I would have definitely said yes; the old Winger would simply make some speech about us always being friends and shoot the gap as soon as another job came up."

"Yeah but he has changed now, our boy has." Shirley convinced herself, still hoping he would find some solution that didn't end up hurting the group.

"If you say so, he's never really changed that much to me." Britta replied noncommittally.

_Or rather he has never changed much __**for **__me, _she corrected, unable to attribute his development to her own influence all that much. While she could somewhat proudly call herself the catalyst for his early development, it quickly became clear that she wasn't the real reason he began to change. The truth of the matter was, with all the petty causes and manipulation aside, Britta and Jeff were too similar to ever create much change in each other.

_He has never changed that much for me,_ she thought again, looking out the window and thinking about who he had changed for.

* * *

"The pain came on suddenly, it is right the centre of my chest and it feels like I'm being crushed." The pale, sweaty man described to Britta as she led him out to the ambulance.

"Uhuh okay and um have you ever had pain like this before?" Shirley asked uncertainly, helping her partner by attaching the heart monitor like they had been taught.

The patient sat back into the stretcher and allowed the pair to hook him up; his hand was clutched to his chest where the discomfort radiated from.

"Hmmm." Britta mused, looking at the heart rhythm strip that had been printed off by the monitor.

The undulating, squiggly line meant exactly five eighths of fudge all to her, since she hadn't bought the rhythm interpretation workbook. _I mean come on, it was like eighty bucks, _Britta reflected at her lack of knowledge. She nodded with a knowing look anyway and passed it to Shirley for a second opinion that would actually be its first.

"That doesn't look right Briiitta," The woman nagged in concern, "And he is in a lot of pain, we should call Jeff and Annie to help."

It was true; the patient's pain hadn't been relieved by the Glycerol Trinitrate (GTN) spray that the pair had administered a few minutes earlier. The spray was used to dilate blood vessels and reduce the workload on a struggling heart; in doing so it often gave some respite from the discomfort patients felt.

"No!" Britta objected, "We can handle this without having a smug Winger and Know-it-all-Annie here."

"But Jeff can give more pain relief medications then us." Shirley argued.

"We don't need the addictive, synthetic mind numbing drugs of a hollow society," The blonde activist protested vehemently.

"We have all the pain relief we need from Mother Nature." She declared, reaching into her bag and taking out a small box of vials.

"I'm going to call Jeff," Shirley decided sensibly, picking up the radio receiver from the front and shotting a worried look at her partner.

"Don't," Britta insisted in vain, adamant to solve the problem without their group leader.

"We have Arnica extract!" She explained, waving a small vial, as if it was the answer to all their problems.

The patient watched the exchange with growing apprehension; all the talk wasn't doing much for the crushing weight in his chest.

* * *

Jeff and Annie met the other ambulance Enroute to hospital. It was a tense silent ride there as the pair didn't even try to discuss the earlier revelation.

Annie felt like things were on tenterhooks and she was afraid that if she said the wrong thing, Jeff might just shut her out like he had a habit of doing.

He was brooding again over the steering wheel in that certain way he always did after sharing something big about himself with the group. The whole being open and sharing his life with others still took a lot out of him and left him feeling uncomfortably vulnerable.

_Kind of ruins my cool indifferent look that I've got going, _an echo of the old Jeff justified his behaviour.

The modern, mature Jeff knew he was being silly in a small part and that he was actually stewing because he had no clear idea what to do with his life. It felt like his purpose had been taken from him, would he have to leave the perso- people he had grown so close to, just to get it back?

Focusing on the present, he saw the other Ambulance up ahead; they had just pulled over so his crew could come aboard.

"Do you want me to wait here?" Annie meekly asked, unwilling to do anything to upset her partner in his unstable state.

Jeff turned at her question and took in her concerned expression, the girl so afraid of making the wrong move.

_How could I keep her out? _He scolded internally, hating himself once more for the emotional trauma he kept putting the girl through.

"No Annie, I want you to come with me and check it out." He finally answered her softly and truthfully.

The pretty brunette flourished under his request and smiled hopefully, seeing his acceptance as a good sign.

"Thanks Jeff."

"Hey you are the one that knows our text book back to front, I might need you." The taller man admitted honestly, but playfully as they got out of the truck.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N- **Huge delay between chapters here, sorry about that; my shifts changed and I recently dislocated my thumb. This chapter might be a bit medically nerdy, but I've tried to keep it light. Let me know if it is too heavy with it, I can always try and scale it back further.

Also bonus points to anyone that spots the Archer reference ;)

**-Grey.**

* * *

Jeff stooped so as not to hit his head as he climbed up into the back of Greendale 2. Always the smooth gentleman, he reached back a hand to help his shorter partner climb in too, only then did he turn to Britta to hear what they were called for.

"This guy's heart is maybe messed up and stuff," The blonde explained in brisk irritation, still displeased that Shirley had called the pair for back up.

Annie squeezed around the tall senior officer to snatch up the ECG rhythm strip that was lying by the monitor.

"He's got real bad pain in his chest, but I'm managing it." Britta claimed defensively, shooting a silencing glare at her own partner who had emerged into the gap between cab and cabin to shake her head in disagreement.

"Hummppth, with what Aloe Vera? And how is that working out?" Jeff challenged her with a sarcastic snort, having noticed Britta's container of herbal remedies.

Britta stepped closer to him, outraged and indignant as always at having her beliefs tested. She bored her gaze into his seriously, upset once more by his intolerance to her alternative lifestyle choices.

"It's Arnica, you arse." She corrected angrily, before her fury quickly died down to be replaced by something more shy and guilty.

"And he hasn't actually agreed to take any yet." She admitted and Jeff sagged in exaggerated relief.

"Thank god," He exclaimed, before sending an apologetic glance over at Shirley.

"The last thing we need is some poor guy having a heart attack who is now tripping balls all the way to hospital."

"Arnica is not that kind of 'herbal medicine' Jeff," Britta defended vehemently, rolling her eyes at his ignorance, but was prevented further argument as Annie popped up between the two arguing friends.

"Uh guys how about we get back to the guy having a heart attack part?" She suggested in a high voice, straining with barely contained concern.

Suddenly remembering the patient, all three of them turned around to face the grey tinged man and gave him a forced smile.

* * *

"Are you people going to get rid of my pain or what?" The obese middle-aged gentleman demanded weakly in exasperation.

"Sure, right." Jeff quickly reassured the patient, reaching for the drug pouch at his waist.

Drawing out a tinny glass ampoule, he held it up to the dim lights on the roof so he could read the label.

"That's morphine right?" He confirmed with Annie, passing her the fragile amber vial.

Annie squinted and gave him a nod in the affirmative, but her face creased in further concern the longer she read the label on the drug. The proximity to an addictive substance so similar to Adderall sent chills down her spine.

"10mg in 1ml," She read out nervously before looking back up at him, "But Jeff this morphine expired last year."

Jeff shrugged his broad shoulders, as he removed a syringe from the IV kit that Shirley had passed him. The pious woman was mumbling reassuring words to the patient in her motherly manner, while she carefully inserted a catheter into one of the veins in his hand. Britta brooded off to a side; feeling disregarded and trying to think up an argument against what was happening.

Jeff looked over with an expecting eyebrow raised, "Come on Annie, Greendale bought these drugs." He reminded her pointedly, the history of their schools cost cutting requiring very little additional elaboration. It did not go unmissed by him just how edgy she was handling the vial of morphine.

"Wait," Britta interjected, cutting off the nonverbal conversation that had almost started between the pair.

"The patient deserves to have a choice in what he takes for his pain." She demanded sternly and holding out her small container of Arnica tablets.

"Fine," Jeff grated as he finished drawing up the analgesic, more to get her off his back then anything else.

He turned to address the patient.

"Sir I understand you are in pain we would like to help you; we have a couple of options here tonight." He explained in a forced facade of politeness.

"I would recommend the Morphine. Did I mention it is morphine, an actual legitimately recognised medicine?" He put forward his case, in his confident, slightly condescending lawyer tone.

Britta simmered slowly at the dig at Homeopathic medicine and awaited her turn to speak.

"It is made from the lovely opium poppy and is supposed to be a hell of a lot better then a few stiff drinks." Jeff continued to sell his service, with his trademark, winning smile.

The patient returned his smile by a shade and started nodding his head eagerly.

Britta forcibly pushed herself in front of Jeff to dominate the patient's attention.

"That's enough out of you Five-head," She hissed.

"Arnica is a natural form of pain relief used for years by native tribes in uh.. Places." Britta stumbled into her campaign, all bluster and passion, with very little fact.

"It isn't habit forming or filled with all these extra nasty chemicals like your manufactured drugs." She spat the final words, glaring at the small syringe in Jeff's hand.

* * *

"I'll take the morphine!" The patient practically screamed, pushing aside the overzealous herbal enthusiast.

Jeff's cocky grin grew in triumph, "A wise decision sir." He complimented, flicking the cap off his syringe coolly with one hand.

A quick look around the ambulance made him stop though.

Annie was anxiously watching the syringe in his hand and Britta had slumped into the dicky seat dejectedly.

_Damn it, _he cursed internally as another small victory lost its flavour to the guilt of friendship and caring about others.

"You know what?" He said to the patient, "I think maybe you should try some Arnica as well as the morphine." Jeff suggested, catching everyone by surprise, himself included.

Britta's face light up and she all but bounced from her position, as the man nodded his head consentingly; at that point he would have done almost anything just to get something for his pain. She carefully dolled out two small tablets and gave them to the sickly man to chew, with an encouraging smile.

Britta backed away and sent a rare grateful grin at Jeff. His attention was already elsewhere though.

A little less sure about his next gamble, he slowly handed the 10ml syringe of morphine to the pretty little Annie Edison. She looked at him uncertainly for a long moment before taking confidence from his small supportive smile and accepting the drug.

A flurry of different dark thoughts fluttered in her head as she prepared to administer the Intravenous solution to the patient. Focussing on the task at hand she managed to brush away her demons by concentrating on the faith her friend had placed in her.

Carefully she pushed off 2.5mg into the man's vein before following it with a small saline flush to help it reach circulation. Annie turned to look up at Jeff and she offered him the syringe back.

"Hold onto it," He instructed her, "We'll come for a ride with these guys in case he needs more along the way."

Shirley cooed softly at the resolution in the small cabin and walked back through to the front to start driving.

* * *

Britta started writing out her notes for the patient at his head end and the visiting pair took a seat on the empty second stretcher.

_We'll come back for the other ambulance after we drop this guy off, _Jeff planned easily, before noticing that Anni still looked conflicted.

"Something the matter?" He quietly asked her, leaning in close so only she would hear his question.

Annie bit her lip silently and took a minute before she replied.

"It was really nice of you to let Britta practice her beliefs," She beamed at him proudly, making him puff his chest out slightly at her expressive gaze.

Her sweet smile faltered with the anxiety that shared her mind.

"But using alternative medicine is against our procedures, we could get in trouble." She revealed with a serious whisper, a waver at the possible implications carried through in her voice.

Jeff's smile stretched a little at her good nature and respect for the rules. He knew he was pretty much the exact opposite.

"It is Britta, Annie. I'm not too concerned about her sugar pills. What's the worst that could happen?" He jovially replied, making light of the situation as usual.

Annie rolled her eyes in a friendly way at her tall partner, who had a way of making undermining the rules seem like no big deal. Her apprehensive expression still held though and seemed focused on the syringe in her hand. Jeff followed her gaze and suddenly clicked to what else may have made her so anxious, he lowered his voice so the other occupants wouldn't hear.

* * *

Britta was starting to think that giving both drugs might have been a big deal after all.

"Uh guys?" She called in concern, eyeing the patient in horror.

Annie and Jeff were preoccupied speaking softly to each other, sharing a private moment like they did and talking out her insecurities.

"Guys its Ana…uh," She started, a lot louder then earlier, but petering out as she forgot what she was seeing was called. Her lip trembled in shock and she struggled to spit out her words.

"Anna Pacquin?" Shirley asked from the front, frantically peering out the windows thinking she had missed seeing her favourite True Blood actress.

"It's uh Ann.." Britta tried again, catching Jeff's mild attention, although he was still staring at the other girl in the back.

"Anne Hathway?" He quickly enquired, whipping around in his chair thinking he might have missed the hottie walking by or something. He misinterpreted her sideways gaze at the patient as being one that was focused out the window. Annie as usual followed their de facto leader's example and spun to try her eye at star spotting.

Greendale did receive the occasional celebrity after all, Abed had even met Luis Guzman last year during the Dean's spiral into insanity as a film maker.

"Anne Flaxis." Britta corrected at a bare whisper, her eyes still fixated on the suddenly struggling patient.

"Never heard of her, is she foreign?" Annie asked carefully, knowing Britta's arthouse taste in films. She turned from her observation out the window for starlets, when her friend didn't reply. It was then that she caught sight of the patient and her eyes widened in shock to match Britta's.

"You meant Anaphylaxis." She realised, looking at the blotchy red patient who was struggling to breathe, their increased efforts masked by the road sound while they travelled.

"I don't know her either.." Jeff started, turning around and stopping as he took in the situation.

"Yep, that is about the worst that could happen." He decided, kicking himself internally for jinxing things earlier.

* * *

"Anaphylaxis.." Britta repeated ominously.

"The multi-systemic hypersensitivity reaction resulting in massive vasodilation and angioedema." Annie recited in frozen terror at the gasping patient in front of her.

"Yeah, yeah, allergic reaction; they swell up and die. I remember." Jeff impatiently cut in, pushing his way between the two girls to lie down the now unconsciousness patient.

"Britta get your shit together and put the patient on oxygen." He snapped.

"Helium," She corrected slowly in her stunned state.

"Whatever." Their leader conceded snippily.

Turning to the frozen Annie, he placed his hands on her shoulders and shook her gently.

"Come on snap out of it Edison. You picked a fine time to break down on me."

The wide-eyed, shocked brunette's eyes were still firmly fixed on the patient and she stammered something about urticaria.

For the first time in his life Jeff almost felt like slapping her. Here he was out of his depth, expected to make important decisions and she was completely checked out.

"Dammit, don't Abed out on me." Jeff growled, before changing tact when he saw his current one wasn't working

Britta finished placing on an oxygen mask and looked back to Jeff expectantly.

"Ahh run some fluid IV," He decided, struggling to remember the protocol for the medical condition facing him.

"I have some aloe juice?" Britta offered helpfully.

"Lets stick with saline or whatever cheap replacement our terrible Dean ended up buying." Jeff wisely shot her down.

_I knew I was going to regret supporting her alternative medicine, _he thought sourly.

* * *

With one person busy, he turned his attention back to the other panicking girl. Annie seemed almost on the verge of tears and her mouth moved under its own accord. Sliding his hands up to cradle her head, he turned her face so she was forced to look at him.

Jeff started talking to her in the soft, but firm tone he reserved for whenever she was doing something he didn't approve of.

"This guy is dying and needs adrenaline." He began putting it as bluntly as he could.

"So I need my smart, amazing Annie back right now, to tell me how much to give." Jeff demanded not breaking her gaze.

Jeff knew that the naturally occurring drug adrenaline or epinephrine as it was sometimes called, was the best treatment for the neurogenic shock and airway swelling that occurred in anaphylaxis. What he wasn't so hot on was the dosage to administer straight away, but that was the exact sort of thing that Annie would have memorised.

Something latched on in the emotional girl's head, light seemed to move behind her eyes as thoughts returned. Maybe it was the mention of the adrenaline, maybe it was being referred to as 'his' Annie.

Whatever it was she seemed to focus.

"0.5 to 0.7mg initial bolus IV," She whispered quickly, determination coming back into her face and masking the earlier fear.

Jeff was so pleased to see the change and get an answer out of her that he acted on impulse. Already holding her head in his arms, he swooped in and quickly kissed Annie square on the lips.

It was a brief, sweet taste of his lips and chaster then the flustered girl would have liked, but he broke it off quickly to draw up the lifesaving epinephrine.

* * *

Feeling like he was the one that had just been given the amping up drug, Jeff's chest pounded strongly with excitement, making his fingers shake.

With the correct dose of the drug drawn up, Jeff plungered off the fluid straight into the flushed patient's arm.

He accepted the screw on end of the giving set that Britta had attached to a bag of saline.

Or at least Jeff had thought it was saline. Standing back up he noticed something very different in the colour of the fluid and the writing on the hanging bag.

"Mountain Dew?" He postulated aloud incrediously. It seemed a new low for Greendale to be providing the terrible soft drink as a cheap alternative for standard volume replacement like sodium chloride.

"Well it is still probably better than Aloe." He muttered sardonically.

_Or Zima, _he added silently to himself.

Britta squeezed the soft bag to increase flow, doing something useful for a change.

"If he dies, it is the establishment that killed him." She insisted, eyeing the bag of sugary fluid doubtfully.

"Yeah, the establishment, not the hippy pills that he reacted to in the first place?" Jeff snidely attempted to clarify, in no mood for another rant from the overly opinionated woman.

Jeff was about to launch into a verbose tirade about unproven medicine when he felt a light tap on his shoulder.

* * *

Turning around Jeff found himself facing the blushing girl, who he had abandoned to deliver the crucial epinephrine.

_Why is Annie blushing so damn much and looking at me like that? _He wondered for a moment having forgotten about his hasty, instinctive reaction earlier.

_That expression is awful familiar,_ Jeff thought remembering having seen her look at him like that a couple of rare times in the past.

Suddenly the memory and emotion came crashing back into him and almost stumbled when he realised why Annie was looking at him like she was.

_I kissed her, again, _he recalled in part elation at the act and part horror at the stupid basic impulse he had followed when she came through for him. It did explain the light bubbly feeling in his stomach and the pleasant tingling that lingered on his lips..

_Unless that is the thrill of the job? _Jeff considered briefly, trying to find some other logical explanation that he could use to justify how he was feeling.

All these thoughts seemed to cross his mind in an instant as he took in her expression.

Her cute face was flushed, her chin lowered slightly as she shyly looked up at him. An uncertain, hopeful smile played on her pert lips.

"Jeff." Annie started, quietly languishing the name and sound of it in her mouth.

"We could dilute a milligram of adrenaline into the bag of …. Mountain Dew.. and run it as an infusion." She coyly suggested.

It was not exactly the sentence the ex-lawyer had expected and he was uncharacteristically lost for words.

Annie misread his silence and quickly expanded on her explanation.

"It would mean he is constantly getting the drug, which should stop his condition from reverting." She elaborated.

Jeff finally clicked to what she was proposing and couldn't help but think she was being overly helpful in search of her earlier reward.

"Yeah good Annie, whatever you just said, do that." He decided smartly.

While his knowledge had been pretty good due to the common sense that ran heavily in medicine, it was true that for drugs and doses Annie was the queen.

He happily surrendered a second vial of adrenaline for her to use and she hesitated s their hands met. Her eyes bored into his and she raised an eyebrow as if to say 'we will talk about the other thing after this.'

Jeff curtly nodded with a minor sense of foreboding; he knew that was coming since he made the mistake of acting without thinking earlier.

"Two minutes from hospital," Shirley announced loudly to the crew in the back.

Annie finished setting up the infusion and turned back to Jeff expectantly.

"You'd better do the talking," She declared and Britta reluctantly agreed.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N- **As ever, apologies for delays.

Also note I got nothing against nurses, doctors or any other medical professionals (just firemen; god I hate those layabout, attention seekers ;p) This is just a piece of comedic writing for my amusement, so no offence intended to anyone out there (except firemen; screw you guys, try doing some real work for a change!).

Thanks for your reviews.

When does the new Community air by the way folks? I don't know about you people, but I can't wait!

**-Grey.**

* * *

Jeff led the procession of friends, as he wheeled the stretcher up the narrow ramp towards the resuscitation entrance of the emergency department. Hot on his heels, in more then one respect, was the ever-bubbly Annie, a pouting Britta and Shirley the cloying.

Their leader halted just before the door and turned back to his friends, in the carpark further back, he noticed a worried looking, middle aged woman exiting a car and focusing on the group at the top of the ramp.

Reaching for the pad of paperwork, Jeff quickly split open the hinged clipboard to withdraw a yellow sheet of paper. He gave the document a cursory glance before looking up at Shirley and Britta.

"Is that this guy's family?" He quickly asked in a hushed tone, referring to the prone man on the stretcher.

"That's his wife I think." Britta answered, unable to remember the nervous woman's name.

"Margaret," Shirley provided helpfully, "She's raised three kids, but apparently still hasn't got the hang of keeping a house clean." She added sweetly in criticism of the other woman's home.

"Not important," Jeff ruled, cutting off Shirley's judgement of a fellow housewife.

"What is important, is this," He declared, waving the yellow sheet of paper to the two women.

"What's that?" Annie asked, nervously glancing back at the patient and wondering what could be so important to delay his entry into the hospital.

"This Annie, is the only thing that stops our poorly trained, but well sculpted ass's, from going to prison." Jeff explained irreverently, with a cocked eyebrow.

"It is a liability waiver I drafted up that annuls Greendale Ambulance officers of any culpability from patients or their family that receive our care." The smarmy ex-lawyer elaborated, creating quotation marks with two fingers on each hand at the word care.

The sick man on the bed gave a raspy cough and Annie shot a stern look at the tall officer, who had halted their progress.

"Jeff!" She reprimanded strictly and started tugging on the stretcher once more.

Jeff made a face at her insistent tone and started to push on the wheeled gurney once more, but not before pressing the sheet of paper into Shirley's hands.

"Get the wife to sign it Shirley," He ordered exactingly, shooting her a serious glance.

The pious woman nodded uncertainly at his request.

"I mean it Shirley," Jeff called solemnly; looking back over his shoulder, "This is important, use all the motherly guilt you have to, just get her signature."

Understanding how important her task was, Shirley ignored the dig at her personality and headed to intercept the patient's wife with a sympathetic expression.

A little jealous that Jeff hadn't entrusted her to the vital assignment, Britta furthered her pout.

_I'm a psyche major, I'm a useful person, _she simmered in indignation.

"What should I do?" She asked Jeff, hoping for an equally important role.

The tall man sent her a condescending look as he opened the door to the department.

"Why don't you make yourself useful and clean up the truck?" He yelled back in reply, easily falling back into his usual pattern of bringing others down.

"Hmmptth." The blonde scowled back at the pointy-faced man, unable to think of a decent riposte, as he and Annie took their patient in.

Hazarding a peek into the back of their ambulance, her frown deepened at the floor that was cluttered with discarded medical rubbish; the assorted plastic packaging from the medical equipment they had used in the job. The tangled cables of the heart monitor seemed to mock her with the untidy mess they formed on the single remaining stretcher.

"A great application of my psycho-analytic skills," She mumbled moodily, reluctantly climbing up the steps to get started.

* * *

Annie was assaulted by the sudden wave of heat from the hospital air-conditioning; she hadn't even noticed how cold it was outside. The excitement of the job and other recent developments had apparently rendered her impervious to the dropping temperature.

Her eyes instantly narrowed and her lips tightened at the favourable looks Jeff received from a couple of the arriving young nurses.

_Are they prettier than me? _She briefly and insecurely considered, sizing up the competition.

Annie almost started skipping when she noted that Jeff completely ignored even the more attractive pair (of nurses) and instead honed his attention on the doctor.

"Heya Jeff! Hi Annie!" The sickeningly friendly man greeted them with a huge grin.

Jeff's expression pretty much matched Annie's face of earlier displeasure as he grated out a cursory greeting to the guy he despised.

"Rich," He growled, putting as much loathing into the single word as he could manage.

The increased saturation of revile in his name went completely unnoticed by the boyish doctor, who casually took a swig from the massive two litre water bottle he was carrying.

"I just get so gosh darn parched on these nightshifts, don't you Jeff?" Doc Pottery-Wood explained to Jeff and his lifted eyebrow.

"It's thirsty work just standing around telling nurses what to do." Jeff agreed sarcastically.

"Well what have you got for me tonight guys?" Rich asked good-naturedly, putting his drink down and switching his eyes between the pair, to see who was going to handover the patient.

"Fifty-five year old geezer, called with chest pain and had an allergic reaction to medications on the way here." Jeff colloquially detailed, disregarding most medical conventions in favour of sounding nonchalant and irritated.

"Oh dear, that's no good!" Rich remarked, shooting a sympathetic frown at the prone man who was being slid across onto a hospital bed.

"What medications have you given him?" The handsome doctor enquired lightly, shooting a dazzling grin at the nurse who was attaching the heart monitor.

Jeff turned to his more mentally astute offsider, who happily answered for him.

"He's had the Aspirin, GTN, Morphine, Arnica extract, a total of 1.4mg of Adrenaline and approximately 700mls of Mountain Dew." Annie replied, reading off the patient report form where it had all been documented.

Rich raised an eyebrow friendlily at the extensive and unusual list of medicines.

"Arnica and Mountain Dew huh?" He chuckled softly, reaching for his drink once more for another sip.

"Live Wire Mountain Dew," Annie quickly interjected, like it was an important distinction.

Rich chuckled again shaking his head appreciatively.

"Wow you Greendale Ambo's sure have some interesting treatments." He teased the pair lightly.

Jeff's face visibly darkened at the playful comment.

"Well we do what we can with what we have," Annie mumbled, embarrassed at the substandard resources they had available.

"And giving adrenaline to a cardiac patient, that's a pretty bold move Jeff." Rich whistled admiringly, giving the other man a wink.

For an obviously intelligent man, Rich seemed to miss just how much his comments wound up the narcissistic ex-lawyer.

"Well it was either that or let his throat close up," Jeff snidely replied, contempt sneaking into his voice.

Rich laughed again at this response.

"You are a funny man Mr. Winger." He declared shooting a finger at the sarcastic, simmering Jeff.

"And you're a complete tool." Jeff returned the compliment with a wide grin.

"Yeah," Annie found herself stubbornly agreeing with Jeff and folding her arms in disapproval of the goody two shoes doctor.

"We may not have a hospital full of proper equipment or a doctorate in medicine, but we do the best we can and you have no right to look down on us." She haughtily reprimanded him, jabbing a finger into his chest.

Jeff was almost as shocked as Rich was by the outburst from Formidable Annie.

Indeed the whole curtained off room was held in the spell of her tirade.

Looking around at her gathered audience of nurses, Annie's face twisted further in outrage.

"And I make quite the nurse do I Rich?" She threw his words back at him.

"Well maybe I don't want to be part of the harem," Annie spat, causing a widespread ripple of offence by the gathered medical professionals.

"Because you wear all that makeup to change the beds right?" She sarcastically accused one of the young pretty females who was watching the drama.

Finally Annie's expression transformed into something a lot more attractive and pleasant. It was look of pride and triumph.

"I think I'd far rather be a paramedic for Greendale, than a nurse for a doctor." She declared loudly to her shocked audience.

Jeff was impressed and astounded at the same time, a barely suppressed smirk lighting his features, as he leaned on their now empty stretcher and enjoyed the show.

"Come on Jeff, let's go," Annie coolly called to her partner, ripping off the patient report form and dropping it on a nearby bench for the hospital staff.

* * *

Shirley returned from getting her signature on Jeff's weasel worded document and climbed up the back to see if Britta needed any more help refurbishing their ambulance.

The blonde had practically finished though and all the housewife was left to do was straighten up the sheet on the stretcher.

"Maybe there is hope for you yet Britta." Shirley commented on the tidy state of the vehicle.

"Oh goody, I may still make it as a domestic slave yet?" Britta sarcastically replied.

The African-American woman narrowed her eyes dangerously.

"You did NOT just go there with the slavery call." Shirley warned her friend.

The blonde back-pedalled frantically and quickly changed the subject.

"Ahh well now we are all clean here should we help out Troy and Abed by doing their truck while they are inside." She swiftly suggested, nodding to indicate the other Greendale vehicle parked up beside theirs.

"That would be a nice thing to do Britta," Shirley conceded sweetly and turning the other cheek to the slight against her.

_Jesus would let that one slide,_ she decided, before proceeding to watch Britta do all the work as payback.

* * *

"Was that you I heard yelling, Annie?" Troy asked popping his head out from one of the curtained cubicles as her and Jeff passed them. Abed of course poked his head out right above his best friend's in a comical fashion to hear the response.

"Forget it, it was nothing." The girl dismissed suddenly shy at her outburst.

"Annie just served up Doc Do-No-Wrong and his pack of slutty nurses." Jeff happily announced to his friends.

Troy whistled appreciatively, _some of them do look pretty slutty, _he agreed in anything but disappointment. He looked over his shoulder guiltily to make sure Britta wasn't around to read his traitorous thoughts.

Abed required further clarification.

"Jeff were these the same promiscuous women that you were-"

He abruptly halted as Jeff desperately made a frantic 'shut up' signal by cutting his hand across his neck in a throat slitting motion. It suddenly turned into a vigorous neck scratch as Annie turned to peer back at him curiously.

Jeff instantly put on his best court-tested look of innocence, to counteract the sudden suspicion he encountered.

"Wait is that Jeffery out there?!" A high-pitched voice called from Troy and Abed's cubicle.

Troy rolled his eyes in exasperation and pulled back the curtain to allow his patient to see.

"This is 'Jean' the Dean's 'sister'. " He introduced with added inflections of disbelief as he said 'her' name and relation.

"I've heard so much about you Jeffery," The weird longhaired patient squealed in excitement.

The Jeff in question just stared in horror, utterly speechless.

"You never reply to my texts," The patient pouted, twisting in discomfort at the pain in their abdomen.

"We think this is actually the Dean in drag." Abed informed the new shocked pair, bluntly, somewhat unnesicarily and slightly louder then he should have.

It didn't take long for the couple to come to the same conclusion.

"Even for him this is just weird," Annie commented uncomfortably.

"Where is Britta? She would have a field day with this." Troy mused.

"It probably actually explains quite a lot." Jeff decided thinking of their odd administrator.

"I wonder how long the Dean has also been his own sister for?" Abed pondered, seeing the potential for Toronto film festival dynamite.

"How long have I been what for?" Dean Pelton enquired, walking around the corner to find members of his favourite study group.

* * *

Conversation immediately ceased and Troy stood with his mouth agape pointing a finger at the two incarnations of the Dean.

One lay in the bed with stringy, shoulder length red hair and a barely decent hospital gown, the other stood at the entrance in his usual bland shirt/tie combo.

"That just wrinkled my brain." He whispered, sitting down in a chair abruptly and sinking his straining brain into his hands.

The rest of the group was still too stunned to speak and the Dean ignored them for once.

Running over to his sister, he threw his arms around her.

"Oh my god, are you alright Jeannie?" The scrawny bespectacled man exclaimed, "I got the call from the hospital and thought you must have been in some kind of Deanger."

"Oh Craig, I had a sore tummy, but Troy took good care of me." Jean reassured him, adjusting her own square glasses and tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear.

"How can I ever repay you Troy?" The Dean whispered dashing over to embrace a resistant and still confused Troy.

"Letting go, would be a good start." He mumbled against the constricting arms and head that was attempting to snuggle up against his chest.

Jeff tilted his head to a side and finally spoke.

"Huh, so the Dean actually has a sister." He remarked, still doubtful. He hadn't ruled out the prospect of this being an elaborate set-up involving a Doppledeaner or Deanleganger.

"So it would seem," Annie slowly agreed, equally suspicious.

"Their physical characteristics are a 99% match." Abed calculated and began to draw conclusions of his own.

"Of course we are," Dean Pelton cried, releasing Troy and heading back to his sister's side.

"We are iDeanticle twins after all," He declared proudly, pulling his sister in close to show the resemblance.

Jeff noticed the family similarities in the way the pair creepily undressed him with their eyes.

"So why does your stomach hurt Jean?" The Dean asked his sister.

"Well you remember the party last night right?" Jean replied.

The Dean's eyes seemed to glaze over and Annie was sure she could almost see little Dalmatian furries dancing in them.

"Bits and pieces," The weirdo replied noncommittally.

"Well you may remember their was that butch biker who brought that massive cucumber with him.." Jean elaborated.

"Well that sounds like our cue to leave." Jeff hastily decided, taking Annie's arm.

The girl blushed furiously at the implication of the Pelton's story and curiosity almost compelled her to stay, but Jeff's insistent tug was stronger.

"Bye Jeffery," The two Pelton's paused their story to yell, as their favourite escaped.


	11. Chapter 11

**Intermission**

**A/N- **Been on a bit of a hiatus for want of a better word. Life got busy again mighty quick, things are shiny again now though. Not a lot of time for writing at the moment, but with a few projects still on the board. That being said, I finish what I start.

On that note, expect another chapter in a week or so, in the mean time here's a little something to tide you over. I had it planned as an extra titbit to tuck on at the end, a short little amusing sketch like the kind that always closes off the actual show.

Call it my gift for making yall wait so long.

On a completely unrelated note, anyone else really enjoy the latest season of community? Yes I know it was a bit different, sometimes not as funny, but I still really liked it.

That is all, for now…

Grey.

* * *

Queue the noise.

Troy was on good form, pushing the thrashed V8 Mercedes engine to its limit. The motor screamed in protest, almost as loud as the cacophony of siren from the roof. Beside him, in the passenger seat of the ambulance, Abed egged on his best friend.

"Come on Troy, every second counts.." He intensely reminded the driver. Abed's face was splashed with red wash from their ambulance beacons and took on rare seriousness in the light.

"I got this," Troy growled, his eyes darting the road in front of them, completely in the zone. His hands strangled the steering wheel as he deftly manoeuvred his long vehicle to avoid the early evening's stationary traffic.

_This must be how Han Solo felt flying the Millennium Falcon , _Troy thought to himself. The impulse to ask Abed to activate the hyperdrive was almost overwhelming. Especially since he knew that if he did, his buddy would respond with an appropriate wookie impersonation before pressing a random button.

Spying their destination coming up on the right, the focused driver abruptly yanked hard on the wheel and pumped the brakes. The straining ambulance screeched to a grinding, bumpy halt, coming up onto the pavement just outside of an older building.

Under flashing red lights, the pair of young paramedics bolted from the vehicle hauling between them a bag each. Realising that the lights were still on, Troy looked about to dash back and turn them off, he was stopped by his partner.

"There's no time!" Abed exclaimed, tugging at Troy's arm with his unburdened hand. In his other he carried a long cylindrical bag with a basic carry strap on it, it was in the GAS green like their jumpsuits.

Troy discarded the thought and powered forward at a sprint to the buildings stairwell. He carried a larger flat backpack across one shoulder, again in a matching green, despite its unwieldy shape, the former athlete handled the load with ease.

Abed caught up to Troy at the bottom of the stairs and together they climbed the steps at a mad dash, taking several at a time in their haste to ascend.

"Come on, come on, come on," Troy chanted to himself with nervous desperation.

Three stories up and the pair were showing signs of fatigue, but still they pushed on spurred by their cause.

Finally reaching the target flat, Abed hesitated at the door, reaching slowly for it.

In a moment of reckless determination fueled by time constraints, Troy pushed past his friend and dropped a heavy shoulder into the door. Years of football had given young Troy a formidable shoulder charge and the cheap lock gave out spilling the door open on its hinges.

Inside the house both young medics knew exactly what to do Troy ripped into trauma pack while Abed pounced forward.

And turned the TV on.

The screen was instantly filled with the latest episode of inspector space time; the new inspector was finally revealed!

"Ahh just in time," Abed sighed contently, seeing that they had only missed the opening credits. He happily accepted a slice of Pizza from Troy who held open their trauma bag, containing a stack of Dominoes boxes.

Red lights flashed through the thin curtains of their flat, from the irresponsibly parked ambulance below.

"The pack kept them nice and warm," Troy nodded approvingly; his best friend really was a genius.

"And this was pretty handy for carrying the coke." Abed declared, shooting his fingers at Troy. He removed the 2.25 litre bottle of coke from the cylindrical bag that usually held an Oxygen bottle.

Pausing from their dinner for their trademark handshake, the pleased pair sunk back into their respective seats.

"Best job in the world," Troy concluded thoughtfully, through a mouthful of pizza.


End file.
